Into the ether
by Ranekaera
Summary: Ok, here's the summary: Ryan meets a strange girl who's caretaker for the Asylum. She discovers many things, among them that she is the only one with the ability to help him move on! NEWLY COMPLETED, CHAPTER 13 IS UP! please review!
1. Ghostly encounter, ghostly memories

Hey, guys just a little something I thought up while eating lunch one day. Ever wonder how the ghosts stay so angry and violent all the time?….read it and R&R PLEASE! THIS IS GOOD SHIT!

p.s. I got the dialogue in this first chapter from the actual arcane book from the 13 ghosts website, so it was actually put forth from the film makers themselves, hint hint…

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Ryan sat in his old basement cell with his arms wrapped as far around his knees as they would now go. He still did not like the straitjacket they had put him in, and as a result, he couldn't move his arms much farther back then it took to scratch one's own shoulder. He could barely do that anymore. He was lost, as always, in the days of his manhood, from the years 1886 or so to 1902. He had only been 26 when he died here. The thought saddened him that he had sought help and not gotten it. Instead, he had gotten something even he did not deserve; the disease of madness and the pain of a slow and tormented death.

Upstairs, Ryan could distantly hear the strains of someone singing, but in his fevered and confused mind, he did not heed it much attention. That it sounded like a woman singing did not bother him at the moment. He was re living his past. He could still remember as if it had been yesterday.

"_We caught him, Doctor"_

"_Good work. Now get him back into the straitjacket"_

_"Unhand me!"_

"_And for extra security, put this over his head"_

_"No, not-"_

"_Let's see you chew through that, you maniac"_

Suddenly, the sounds of someone moving about upstairs and the familiar, haunting sound of keys brought Ryan back to the physical world with an unpleasant bump. Had that horrible man, Cyrus Kriticos, been there at that moment, wearing those odd glasses, to Cyrus, Ryan would have suddenly popped into existence, for he had been floating in that netherworld that is home to all ghosts and wayward spirits; memory.

Ryan slowly unfolded his arms and shook the weathered, leather straps out of the jumbled knot they had been in, and stood up. His hair hung in his face, long, unkempt and far more gray then it had been in his lifetime. The stress and the severe strain had turned it prematurely. The wounds on his face that would never heal itched as if from far away but Ryan was far too used to this minor annoyance to care.

Right now there was the nuisance of the live one from upstairs.

He slowly glided up the basement stairs, walking around, over, and sometimes through the bodies in various stages of decomposition on the corridor floor. Bodies of his victims over the centuries. He reached the door and slowly opened it, the old fashioned hinges and black wrought iron latches just the same as he remembered them. If the live one heard or saw the door open, seemingly of its own accord, well, then Ryan would just have to hope they thought it was the wind or something. Live ones were just like that.

_But you were live too, at one point, weren't you?_ His fevered mind tried reasoning with itself. He shook his head and focused his yellow-gazed intent on the boy he say standing with his back to him.

The boy was short, not much shorter than Ryan himself and he had long hair that was red streaked with black. It was mostly black. He was doing something…

When the boy turned to the side to do something, Ryan saw with dismay that he was wearing some sort of long, shiny black raincoat that reached the floor, and he was carrying a weapon. Not that weapons were of any threat, not anymore, but anyone who carried a weapon had to know what they were doing. And the boy had done nothing to irritate him just yet…Ryan sighed and retreated back into a corner to watch the boy for a time. He didn't always kill when he met a live one. Sometimes he sat back and simply watched them. Sometimes watching them reminded Ryan what it was like to be alive himself, made him feel younger.

The boy had odd movements for a boy, and as Ryan watched, he noticed that he carried some sort of long, black case, resembling a black doctor's bag, but with….

Then it struck him what the shape looked like. It wasn't a doctor bag, it wasn't even a coffin…it was some sort of guitar case, he saw.

When he had been alive, he had seen groups of these people standing on the side of the street, playing their instruments, but that had been in the richer sections of town, and his mother hadn't often taken him there. Sometimes, he had wandered off on his own and just watched and listened to them play for hours…

Then there was a hideous squealing sound, and Ryan covered his ears and screamed. The boy fumbled with something in one of his pockets and, bringing their hand to their ear, said "hello."

It was a woman!

Ryan laughed hysterically, and at the same time jumped up and danced around, screaming and laughing. It had been a woman all along! And to think that he had thought it a boy! How preposterous!

Just then, the woman in the black boy's clothes and the long coat turned at the sound of his laughing and frowned slightly. He saw that she was very pretty, and then dismissed her almost as quickly as another whore. Her eyes were an amazingly clear shade of green and her skin was creamy and soft looking. She had a small button nose and a rather square jaw and nonetheless managed to look like a pit bull anyway. She was obviously some sort of guard, but a guard of what? He wondered.

_Never mind, just slash her throat out Ryan._

He shook his mane of grizzled hair out of his face and ignored the voices in his head once again.

"Can I call you back, Donny? I think I just heard someone outside." She said, in a somewhat deep voice. She pressed something in her hand and pocketed it once again.

"Hello. I wondered when I would be meeting you." She said finally. She was looking right at him. Dimly, he wondered if she was a friend of Cyrus Kriticos, come to take him away to some other horrible cell.

"I won't hurt you." She said then.

"Bah! That's what they always said, and then they threw you into a cell and fetched you some bread." He replied acidly, although he reminded himself that she couldn't hear him anyway.

"My name is A.J. I'm the caretaker for this place now." She said, after staring at him a moment longer. He was reminded of how, just a moment ago, _he _had stared at _her_.

Ryan didn't answer her and just giggled morosely to himself as he was again lost from her view, gone into that world of fantasies, that world of idealism, of hopes and dreams of a future that in Ryan Kuhn's mind had never come.


	2. Things to do

Hey, sorry I've been away so long, but I've been busy. Here I am, to continue in my second Ryan Kuhn story. Enjoy: Alexandria Jasmine, better known here as , Zavier

P.S. I researched a lot of things for the town of Borehamwood England, and have taken liberty of a few things, so any British people reading this, please feel free to correct me or give me feedback.

AJ's point of view

She watched the ghastly, abused figure of the madman fade as if he'd been a dream, and she shrugged it off like it was nothing. If he didn't want to talk right now, that was his choice. She had somewhere to be anyway.

She grabbed up her guitar case, put the sword she held away inside a desk (which she promptly locked; no one touched her swords, she loved them too much) and fished around through her extensive key ring for the big, ornate one that went to the front door.

Stepping outside put her in the town of Borehamwood, or, Boreham Wood, England. She hadn't been born there; on the contrary, she had actually missed her plane back to the states more than two years ago and had since said screw it. She'd gotten citizenship. The town wasn't so bad. It had a lot of people, but the section of town she worked (and lived) was smaller, with more abandoned buildings frequented by the homeless and the riffraff of society.

She looked after the old Borehamwood asylum. Made mostly of brick, it had miraculously survived the fire that had ultimately closed it down a little over a century ago. She had done extensive research on it before having express permission to move in. She knew it was haunted, and she'd heard the rumors about Ryan Kuhn, a.k.a. the Jackal, but she had never before seen him. She thought about that for awhile, shivering against the icy wind. She glanced up. The sky was dark and rain threatened.

The fact that the man's ghost had appeared to her, had actually spoke, was interesting. She yearned to know more about him, because he was her first ghost ever. From her research, the guy had been about 26-28 when he died and that he'd been in the basement. She had keys to all those cells down there, but out of some unknown respect for the ghost, and the rumors, she had stayed out. But he had appeared to her! Her, of all peo-

Her phone rang, jarring her out of her thoughts. She jumped a little, then laughed out of her own stupidity. Reaching into her jacket pocket, she pressed the button that answered her phone.

"Hello?"

" 'Ey, luv. How ya doin'?" It was her best friend, Lance. It'd been he who had found her, hysterical and worried, at London's airport when she had missed her plane. He had offered to take her in, and she had gladly accepted. She liked England and its people. She had liked Lance at once for his rugged look and his gentle voice. He was a kindhearted, older man who would not raise a hand to anyone. She had never known him to yell at anyone.

"Oh, y'know, the usual. Closing the place up, going to your place to put some stuff back. It's alright, isn't it?" she asked. She knew he wouldn't tell her no. The car he'd bequeathed to her a year ago (and which she loved, despite its problems) was parked at the side of the road in front of the huge wrought iron gates at the end of the lawn that stretched in front of the old asylum.

The estate property was huge. It had at least 25 acres, with huge, sweeping lawns and its own little courtyard. No plants or trees grew there anymore… the land was burnt too badly from the fire all those years ago. There were renaissance balustrades and an arched tower where she usually slept (she had a suspicion it had been added on after the Fire). It was the only unfurnished part of the building. The old greenhouse that was a main hangout of the patients all those years ago still stood, but no plants grew there and the glass was mostly blown out.

All in all, the old Borehamwood Asylum had once been a grand place, a beautiful building with even more beautiful lawns. Now it was gray and bleak and a bit depressing. AJ didn't mind. In fact, she liked the building. At least she was alone. She liked her British friends, but after awhile, she could get tired. She had her own "little" retreat.

Besides; she felt sort of special to have such a huge, beautiful (however demolished) place to herself, and her friends' surprise that she lived in the old asylum never ceased to make her a little proud. Actually, it wasn't bravery that made her proud to live in the old Borehamwood place; it was a rabid fascination with the supernatural that she'd had since she was a kid. She saw a huge, old place like the asylum and just hoped that it was haunted. She … didn't know why.

She remembered she was still on the phone.

"Sorry, Lance, got lost in thought." She said quickly.

"You always think about that ol' place. I still dunno know why they 'aven't torn it down. You're coming over?" asked Lance?

"Yeah. I'll be over in like, three minutes."

"A'ight. I'll have cocoa on for ya. Seeya in a few". He said.

"Thanks Lance. See you in a bit" she hung up the phone. She was always happy after talking to Lance. He was like the father she never knew, even though he was around the age of 45 or so, too old to be her father.

After hanging up, she had no choice but to sigh, pull her coat more closely around her and make her way down the sweeping, overgrown lawn to the front gates, and her car below.

The girl didn't know it, but as she climbed into her strange, giant piece of metal on four wheels, Ryan watched her, a mixed expression of seething hate and lazy indifference on his face.

He simply stood there, yellow-green gaze staring outside. He felt nothing. He weighed nothing. Yet he knew he was solid enough to touch the window with both hands and press his slashed forehead against the glass, and this he did. His long, sharpened nails (kept sharp over the last years of his life by scraping the sides of them against the stone floor) tapped gently against the grimy glass, and he stared at the girl as she drove away. He wasn't sure why he stared. He just did.

How could he have ever thought for a moment that this living girl was a boy?


	3. Lance and his story

Hey, sorry I haven't been on in awhile. Actually, if you wanna know the truth, I kinda forgot about this one... heheh. Oh well. Better late than never. 12:41, July 20, 2007

p.s. I do not own anything namebrand, I do not own rights for adam sandler or john wayne. I just threw them in there for giggles.

She arrived at Lance's house a little later than she'd planned. She had stopped on the way not only to gas up, but to eat as well, and it was nearly dark as she pulled into the rock-lined driveway.

His was an old fashioned log cabin, with two added extensions and a small, elongated section that connected the east wing to the main section of the house. She had spent a month there, in one of the spare rooms, helping out around the house and doing odd jobs she knew how to do in repayment of his kindness.

She got out of the beat up blue bug and made her way up the drive. Rocks crunched under her feet and the wind blew in from the nearby lake, chilling her. She liked the cold of England as opposed to the unbearable heat of her Florida home much better, but sometimes she kind of missed Florida's winters.

"Lance? You here?" she called out as she opened the door. Inside was warm, cheery and had a nice, lived-in feeling that made her comfortable at once. The wood stove in the corner of the kitchen kept the place warm, and the light from the TV in the living room cast an odd flickering light on the wall opposite her.

"In 'ere luv. What took ye' so long?" came Lance's voice.

"I stopped at the gas station and grabbed a bite to eat. I got you a sub." she replied. She took her trench coat off and hung it in the den and shivered at the onslaught of warmth. The walls in the kitchen had long ago been painted a cheery butter yellow and on the formica counter, she saw a porcelian mug of hot chocolate and a tray of cookies, what the British called biscuits.

"Thanks for the cocoa. I think it's gonna rain tonight. What's up?" she called. She sipped appreciatively at the hot drink and nibbled on a cookie. The cocoa warmed her from the inside.

She brought her mug into the living area and sat down on the couch opposite from Lance.

He was about six feet tall, hale but chubby. His weatherbeaten face had a tan and his scraggy beard and hair had a scrubbed appearance. His light blue eyes were focused on the evening news, where the newsreporter woman was talking about a train crash somewhere in Surrey.

"A.J. handed him the wrapped sandwhich and he smiled and focused his attention on her instead. He smiled.

"Thanks, 'J. I didn' feel up to cookin' tonight, so I's hopin' you'd bring something. Weather gettin' bad, is it?" he asked. He took the sandwhich and began unwrapping it.

"Bacon. Your favorite, no onions, extra pickles. Yeah, it's getting bad. Chilly. Windy. Looks like it's gonna rain," she replied. She sipped her drink again and watched him take a huge chunk of the sub sandwhich. A piece of bacon fell out and she winced slightly; it was fatty and limp and she didn't think it was very good for him. He wasn't old, exactly, but his health wasn't what it should have been. He lived alone, and had been for a very long time, and she felt she owed it to him to try and help him out. For now at least, she let him have his way.

"It's always chilly this time of year. Gettin' close to October. An' y'er friend called, what's-'er-name, from the States, Sarah? Wanted to know why you haven' been online in awhile. You spend too much time around that old place, 'J. It's not good for ye'. You should get out more." he scolded lightly. He was talking about the Asylum.

He took another bite of sandwhich, and A.J. took the opportunity to roll her eyes while he couldn't see her. Sara.

When she was in college in the States, she hadn't had very many friends. She'd gotten a sort-of boyfriend, but he slept around a lot, and one of these people was a fat girl named Sarah. Surprisingly they'd made fast friends, until that day her class had taken a "field trip" across the Atlantic, and she was stranded by her so-called 'best friend'.

"I told her before awhile ago, I don't really like talking to her anymore," was all she said.

A long silence stretched out as Lance watched TV and she sat sipping her drink, until it was gone.

The living area was sparsely furnished. There was an entertainment stand with a large, flat screen tv on it, two speakers, a rack of cd's and the couch they both sat on. The carpet was a soft shade of Mauve and the stairs leading to the second floor were not carpeted. Not many picturesd adorned the walls, except one of Lance and an older woman she had always believed to be his mother.

"What time is it?" she asked, more to break the silence than because she cared what time it was. She had nowhere to be, after all.

"Lance chuckled dryly between the layers of mayo, bacon, cheese, pickles and tomato, swallowed and said "You're just bored. It's 'round 8 pm. Why? Got a hot date?" he laughed at his own feeble joke. A.J. had no date, and he knew it; he just liked to tease. The British boys so far had no interest in "the dumb yank" as they called her. She thought she knew that Lance knew all this. There wasn't a lot he missed.

"Y' want to rent a couple movies? The movie place down the street don't close 'till 9 or so." he offered.

She brightened.

"Sure. What do you want to see this time? Another scaaaaarry movie?" she teased. Lance hated scary movies, and she knew it. She never missed an opportunity to tease him about it.

He chuckled again and shook his head. He liked comedies and old westerns.

"How 'bout that Indian in the cupboard?" he suggested. A.J. moaned in mock preotest. He'd seen that one about a hundred times.

"How about I grab one that I think you'll like?" she said.

"A'right. You know where the money is, borrow my car and head right back. No detours. I know how you like explorin'. I don't disapprove, but it's gettin' dark. Hurry back, 'k?" he said. She smiled and nodded.

She liked Lance; it was hard not to. He was getting to be 60 or so, judging from the dates on the photos she'd seen, and he had a kind heart. A lot of neighborhood people liked him and the area homeless practically worshipped him for the food and sometimes-shelter he often provided. He was the founder of a couple different cherity organizations and had a lot of money from some inheritance or other, but she never knew why he took _her_ in. She had often pondered the reason, but always came up with no reason; he just liked people.

She did, indeed know where he kept some extra money hidden away in case he needed it- behind the cookie jar. She grabbed a couple notes and his car keys from the hook on the wall, tugged her coat on and headed back outside. It was indeed raining. She just hoped it didn't get much worse; she didn't drive well in heavy rain.

Lance's car was a surprise the day he got it; an old American muscle car he named Bonnie. It was actually an old 1969 Dodge Charger RT. Why he liked it was a mystery; it needed a new paint job.

She jumped in, made sure to turn the radio down and started it. The reason she turned the radio down before starting it was because Lance liked classic rock. And he liked it loud. It wasn't that she didn't like rock; on the contrary, she lived, breathed, ate and slept to hard rock music. She lived for her heavy metal and hardcore. It was just always a surprise when she turned the car on and some Velvet Revolver song blasted her ears off.

It was as she was driving down the road, thinking of how the cherry air freshener and the smell of the leather interiors reminded her of her Maine home, that she remembered the spirit she'd seen in the old Asylum. Why had he spoken to her? Why hadn't he attacked? How could she hear his voice? So many questions raced through her usually fast-paced mind, and she had answers to none of them. Perhaps she'd go to the library tomorrow and see what she could look up.

She pulled into the parking lot of the only Blockbuster for miles, and immeduiately, her mood darkened; the usual group of gangster-wanna-be's were hanging around, and they never missed an opportunity to mess with her for her baggy, gothic-vampire-looking clothes. As usual, she ignored them and resisted the urge to flip them off as she walked inside.

"You're out late, J. Looking for another Rice movie?" asked her only other friend in the country, Hector. He hated his name and insisted that everyone, even his parents, even his manager, call him Havoc.

"Nah. Lance wants an old western. I was thinking comedy for tonight. How's business?" she asked.

"Fuckin' horrible. Mostly 'cause of those friggin' wanna-be's out there. They give ya a hard time?" he asked. His only other co worker for the shift, Meggan, gave him a dirty look for his swearing on the job, but said nothing.

"Mmmm." said A.J.

Alright, le'sseeee... western, western, western, western...here. Got it. There's only five of 'em, though. You want recent of really _really_ old?" he joked. They both knew that when Lance wanted an old western, none of them would be recent.

She laughed for the first time that day.

"Ancient. You know Lance. You have anything with Adam Sandler?" she asked.

"Yeeeaah. Something called Mr. Deeds. You want it?" he asked, looking at his computer screen.

"Yeah. And do you have any documentaries on... ghosts?" she asked.

Havoc looked at her oddly, then, his lank blonde hair obscuring half his thin, pale face as usual. He looked at her with one dark brown eye.

"Not about that ol' asylum again, are you? I still think ye'r bloody daft to go living in that place. Wouldn't do it meself. Oy, Meggan! You wanna get these three?" he said to the purple-haired girl next to him. She nodded and headed off, not saying a word. She rarely ever did.

"Can you keep a secret?" A.J. whispered, leaning on the counter. He nodded and leaned in too, his pimples reflecting the glare of the florescents overhead.

"I've seen the Jackal. He talked to me." she whispered. Havoc looked frightened, then skeptical.

"I'd forget it if I was you. Nothin' good comes outta that place, and I bet you nothin' good ever will. They shoulda torn it down ages ago. Why do you live there?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I just like it. I'm thinking of getting the owner's oermission to renovate it, make it halfway liveable again. Clean it up. It'd give me something to do." she said lightly.

"Here." said Meggan then, depositing the movies on the counter. She returned to sorting out shelves without a word.

Havoc began decensitizing the movies and taking the plastic guards off the ends without a word.

"Here you go. And like I said, nothin' good'll ever come outta that house, just you wait. If the owner says you can do it, I'll help, but only in the light 'o' day and only 'cause I like you. Now get back to Lance 'fore the rain gets any worse. And good luck." he said, putting the movies in a bag and handing them to her. She smiled and took them.

"Love you too, Havoc." she said sarcastically, and she payed and swept her way out the door.

It took her fifteen minutes to get back to Lance's, when it'd only take her five in better weather. The rain had worsened.

She shook her hair out upon going through the door into the den and shivered as she took her heavy coat off. Hanging it up with her free hand and holding the movies in her other, she let herself in to the warm, glowy kitchen to find Lance sitting at the table drinking his usual cup of cocoa before bed. He always went early. He smiled as she came in.

"Did'ja find one?" he asked.

"Yup. John Wayne. 1960, based in the 30's. American West Frontier. I, on the other hand, went with a ghost story and Adam Sandler." she said, depositing the bag on the tabletop.

"Good, good. Is it bad out there?" he asked.

"Pretty bad. But I made it. Hey," she said then, suddenly struck by an urge to get an opinion, "Do you think whoever owns the asylum would let me renovate the place, clean it up, make it more liveable?"

Lance sipped his drink for a few minutes and didn't answer but when he finally did, it was with a heavy voice.

"I own that place. Rather, m'family did, back in the 80's. We purchased it from the town thinkin' we could throw a halloween party, but we never did anything with it. My freidns wouldn't go nowhere's near the place, they was all scared 'o' the ghost. It was the last I'd ever seen 'o' my girl, too..." he trailed off.

It was as if A.J. had been thrown into the middle of a lifelike jugsaw puzzle. If Lance owned the place, why had it taken so long to get permission to caretake for it, then move in? Why did he always get a far away look in his eyes whenever she mentioned it? She was slightly hurt that he'd hidden this piece of information from her all the time.

"You were wondering why I never told you about it? It's because I think that place is evil. I regretted my father buying that piece of history the week before halloween. I s'pose you want to hear the story..." he trailed off. When she didn't reply, he went on.

"You better siddown, cause I haven' talked about this for a long time, and I don' think I'll have the strength to tell it again after this. 1983, I had a girlfriend named Bonnie. I named my car after her as well. We were all in the main area of the place, puttin up streamers and the like, when we all heard this shriek. It made my blood run cold when m' friend Ronnie said Bonnie was missin'.

We found her the next day, when it was brighter out and we could see bettter. She was layin' in front 'o' the basement door with her pretty little dress torn to ribbons and her neck snapped. She was dead." He explained.

A.J. saw with some sort of guilt and pity that the old man was crying. Was that why there were no pictures of her in the house? She didn't remember any photo labeled 'Bonnie' in his family album.

He sniffed and wiped his nose on a napkin.

"Ar', the good die young. My Bonnie was no age to go." he said quietly. A.J. didn't know what to say except "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up".

"No, no no. I should have talked about this years ago. I should have cried about this years ago. I never told anyone when they asked me 'cause I couldn' bring meself to remember. So ye' wanna fix the place up decent? What did'ja have in mind?" he asked.

She shrugged, awkward after the tearful confession, and mumbled something.

"Wha's that?" he asked. She sighed, seeing no other way around the matter.

"I wanted to clean up the basement and the second floor in the main section, replace windows and floorboards, stuff like that. Fix the electrical wiring. Get a tv in there, some books and some new furniture. Everything's a mess. I... kinda figured I could do a lot of it on my own, except the wiring and the windows." she said.

"Well... I can't see what it would hurt, but I don't wanna go near that basement... I couldn' bear it. A'right. I s'pose you can fix it up, an' I'll get a man to come fix the wiring and the windows. Bu' I don' wanna hear anything 'bout what goes on in that basement, or anything about the ghost. That man was evil in life, and I guess he's evil in death. If ye' see him, don't go near him. Ye hear ?" he warned her.

"Yes, sir. But the cost-?"

"Is not a problem. I've had a trust fund set aside fer the place ever since my daddy bought it in '83. I just never used it. I s'pose it couldn' hurt to hand it over to you. I daresay you can use it better than me, anyhow. I'll have everythin' set up in a couple'a days. In the meantime, I'm going to bed." He said. He got up, put his cup in the sink and went into the living room. A moment later, she could hear his feet on the stairs.

She sighed and put her fingers to her temples. She had lived here in England for a little over a year, and she thought she'd known everything about the little town of Boreham Wood. It seemed it was never safe to assume anything here.

She shut off the lights, brushed her teeth, took her pants off and climbed onto the couch in the sitting room and fell into an uneasy sleep, riddled with dark wood, floating lights, bloody dresses and bright yellow eyes.


	4. Back to insanity

This particular chapter is from Ryan's POV. I think I'll alternate chapter to chapter... I accept flames and compliments, so please R&R. Oh, and if anyone spots my mathematical mistake, Ryan was 25 when he died, according to me, so he didn't die in 1902... sorry. I knew there was a reason I failed math in high school, hehehe.

It was three days later, but Ryan didn't know. If he knew, he wouldn't have cared. Days were all the same to him, and he was wondering if today would be different.

There was a white van pulling up into the long, sweeping, rocky driveway. It drove up front and stopped and Ryan saw words on the side, but no matter; he couldn't read in life and he couldn't read now. He recognized one word, though; his name, Ryan.

A man got out, fat, balding and wearing a white jumpsuit. Ryan watched with interest, his clawed, white fingers scraping the broken window he leaned against. His dead yellow eyes watched the man as he went to the back of the van and opened the doors there. He pulled out a big, square pane of glass.

_They're replacing the windows. Odd. Why would anyone bother?_ he thought. He just as quickly dismissed it.

He'd seen something far more interesting.

The girl who'd had the sword last time. The one he'd mistaken for a boy. She had a ripped shirt on today and a pair of trousers with chains on them. He didn't think much of her style of dress; it reminded him too much of the straitjacket prison the doctors'd put him in too long ago, and which he'd never escaped even in death.

The front doors opened and Ryan jerked out of his reverie like a rabbit caught in a trap, his eyes wild and his body taut and alert. The fat balding man walked in holding the glass, followed by the girl. He was surprised to hear the girl giving the orders.

"Where d'ya wanna put these till my partner gets here?" asked Baldy.

"Just put them wherever. I'm going to start picking shit up off the floor. Just do your thing." said Miss Two-Tone Hair. He couldn't remember her name.

She looked around the big room, and Ryan thought he'd have some fun. He closed his eyes and sidestepped into his own memory, where everyone was still alive in his own time and where he was still hated and treated like dirt. This was how he stayed so angry. His memory wouldn't let him forget. In his memory, Borehamwood asylum wasn't dead; it was still a prison for him, and the bad men were still there.

He reappeared in the world of the living right behind the girl. Slowly, he ran one bony dead white finger up her spine, and he snesed her freeze. She started to slowly turn around, but before she could, he pushed her violently to the floor.

"Ack!" she cried as she hit. Ryan bent down to look at her and he cackled. Her mouth was bleeding, a bright red line dribbling from the corner of her mouth. Unsurprisingly, she was glaring at him with something like hatred. Ryan thought the only thing he'd ever seen with eyes that mean and green was a spitting cat he'd once thrown across a rooom. Remembering this made him laugh even harder.

"You alright miss?" asked Baldy.

"Yeah, just tripped, that's all. Tell me when the power guy gets here." she grumbled. She pushed herself up and stood brushing herself off, still staring at Ryan. He put both hands on his thin chest, as if to say "_who me? I didn't do anything!"_ Then he laughed and ran back down into his basement cell, where the remains of his dead body still lay, although the bones were scattered.

He needed time to think. What was he going to do about this girl? She didn't appear to be a slut, a whore, a prostitute, a doctor, or a researcher. In fact, she appeared to be an angry teenager.

_Hang her upside down and play with her guts._ said the infamous Voice in The Back of His Head.

He shook his head as best he could with a ten pound cage on his shoulders, his long, grizzled gray and black hair slapping him in the face as he did so. No, he wouldn't play with her guts just yet. For some reason she piqued his curiosity. Of course, in the past his curiosity was enough for him to look at a woman, assume she was a slut, and follow her for a bit before disemboweling her with his bare hands, so it wasn't saying much.

But what if she could help him move on?

_Don't be stupid, if she wanted to help you with that, she'd talk to you more. Besides, you've been clinically and legally insane for the past who-knows-how-many years, so what makes you think she's gonna care?_ he thought.

"I don't care. Shut up for a minute and give me time to think,"he said to himself.

From the floor above, Ryan dimly sensed another life force. It seemed another one had joined Baldy and Miss Two-Tone Hair.

He looked around at the basement cell that'd been unchanged since his untimely demis in 1912. His gray and soot-blackened bones lay helter-skelter around the four corners of the room. The walls and floor were made of stone.Charred heaps of grisly somethings Ryan thought had been hay, if memory served him correctly, and his broken skull in the corner, still with the wretched iron cage in place. He sighed, suddenly lonely.

He sat on the floor with his knees against his chest and his arms folded over the latter, and closed his eyes. He remembered the cobbled streets of London, 1894.

He is seven years old, and is walking the streets to school, dressed in little more than torn pants and a ragged peasant shirt. His black hair is dirty, desheveled and he has a thin streak of gray where he'd bumped his head when he was younger. The other boys tease him and laugh at him as he walks, because they are poor, too but look better. They have the best they can under the circumstanses. And everyone knows his mother. The cheap whore. He is supposed to go to the school building, but instead, he heads across the street to the park. He can't bear to go today.

(_THUMP)_

A loud noise shook Ryan out of his memories so violently that he actually stumbled as he once more went to the present time in the real world. Looking around wildly, he saw nothing amiss. He growled irritably and glared at the cieling as if it had done him a close personal wrong.

"Damn witch" he muttered, and he vanished in a puff of ethereal smoke.

He reappeared likewise in the lounge area of the asylum, melting a hole in the girl's head with his hatefull yellow stare.

There were two men now, and his first thought was _what the hell are they doing?_ Then he saw that the new man with no shirt on was standing on a metal ladder, playing with a lot of multi colored strings.

The girl shivered and spun around. Her eyes flashed a darker shade of green and he knew she'd spotted him.

His temper flew out of hand, and he pushed her again. She flew across the floor and flipped over onto her back.

"Owww!!" she cried. The two men working stopped and stared. They had seen the whole thing. Good. Now maybe they'd leave.

"I think it's the ghost. Ghost... whoever you are, we won't hurt you!" called Baldy. Ryan raised one heavily scarred eyebrow. Either this man was stupid, or he was crazier than he was. They weren't going to hurt him? They were the ones who'd let him _die!_ He danced around and around, laughing at the top of his voice.

"Not going to hurt me? Not going to HURT me?! Ahahaha!!" he cackled.

"Jackal, _no!"_ cried the girl, but Ryan never heard her. He rushed at her , but she swung her arm out, and caught him by the chest. He was so shocked, he forgot to claw at her, make her let go.

"My god... she's caught him..." mutttered Baldy, but Ryan wasn't paying attention. He stared blankly at the girl who clutched the front of his thin, ragged straitjacket. Her touch was like a live wire touching his cold, dead form. He jerked away from her, too reminded of the hot, melting feeling of the fire that had taken his life, and she let go. He gave her one last frightened stare before closing his eyes and fading back into 1894.


	5. Big trouble

What would YOU do in a situation like this? Like what, you may think? Just read on and tell me.

TNX to all reviews so far, I think this is the most a story of mine has ever got, actually... ENJOY!

ps. I obviously know nothing about home improvement.

pps. I do not own Swiffer or Hefty, but I guess you figured that. If I did, I would be RICH!

"I'm sorry, Miss, but I'm not stickin' around. That ghost 'as a nasty temper. I'll just leave the sealin tools with yeh', 's not too hard teh figure out. Bye then!" The bald man named Ryan gave a hurried wave and dropped his tool belt on a badly slashed chair near the front doors. He left so fast his van made skidmarks in the dirt.

"What about you?" challenged AJ, glaring at the man as if daring him to leave, too. Window replacement, she could probably figure out. She definitely could NOT figure out electrical rerouting.

"I-I'll stay, but on'y because ye freind is paying me extra and overtime. Uh... would ya hand me those white wires over there on the floor?" asked the man with no shirt. He had a heavy face and was pale as the ghost he had just "seen".

"Here." said AJ. She handed the man the thick bundle of wiring and he took it and began cutting it with a little pocket knife in his pocket. She turned her attention elsewhere.

The floorboards were covered in scorch marks and there was trash and debris everywhere except the place where she slept some nights. She sighed and opened the big front doors to the cold morning sunshine.There was dew everywhere from the previous nights rain but she breathed in the brisk chilly morning air. She loved this time of year.

The leaves on the trees were just beginning to turn orange and yellow. Blazing reds lined the front gates of the asylum and the dark purple witch hazel bordered the rocky driveway. The grass was far from green, but she was fine with that, too. The sky was a dazzling periwinkle blue, unusual for October, and she smiled. October made her feel so alive.

She walked to her little blue car and opened the trunk, what the British called a boot, for some reason, and pulled out the broom, dustpan, trash bags and little swiffer vacuum she'd brought with her.

She passed the man with no shirt on the way up the stairs.

"Done already?" she asked.

"Nah. Just goin' to the truck to get sumthin' I forgot." he replied. She rolled her eyes and carried the supplies in, then went back outside to get the cleaning solutions.

When she came back in, it was to find the various thngs she'd just brought in in different positions than she'd left them in. She clucked impatiently and rolled her eyes for the second time that day: Jackal. He was fucking with her.

_Or he wishes, anyway_. She'd gone to the library three days before, and researched all she could about the man; apparently he was a violent stalker in life who predated on young women. She didn't see reason to believe his spirit was any different.

The man came back in with new light fixtures and a big tangle of wiring, his tool belt sinking on his skinny hips, and she raised her eyebrows in surprise. The guy had more guys then his counterpart, apparently. She had fully expected him to leave and never come back.

While the man did his work, she got to hers. Sighing in resignment, she figured she'd better start somewhere. She headed to a heavily mucked up corner near the hall leading to the basement, tucking various charred somethings into her trash bag, sweeping as she went. She was a regular one-woman cleanup crew. When a strand of cherry red hair got in her face, she brushed it aside and kept cleaning, sweating profusely.

"That's odd..." she muttered to no one, picking up something shiny from underneath a burnt and ragged shirt. SHe rubbed at some of the grime with her finger; it was a heavy bit key, what most people called a skeleton key. She smiled in spite of her sweaty, sticky predicament. She collected keys like this back home in the States. She tucked it into her pants pocket and kept cleaning, in a slightly better mood. Now she was doing more than cleaning.

She was treasure hunting.

While going around the bigger living area, she found two more similar keys, along with several used scumbags, (she cringed slightly and gritted her teeth as she made herself pick them up with the tinniest amount of finger useage possible, and resolved to scrub her hands down when she finished) an old straitjacket she couldn't believe she missed on her first one-over of the place, several rusty nails, a tea pot and an old deck of cards.

_Amazing, the things you find in the most unlikely of places, _she thought, looking at the playing cards. She threw them into the sack with the rest of the trash and finally stood up to survey her work. It had taken her the better part of half and hour, and the electrician was almost finished.

"If you go upstairs, the lights up there should be working again. As soon as I'm finished with this thing, I'll be outta your hair." he said abcentmindedly, fiddling with the ornate crystal chandelier he was in the process of hanging. She raised her eyebrow. If Jackal kept up the violence, it'd be broken within the month. It _was_ pretty, though.

She was wiping down a fireplace mantle when the electrician left, and she flicked on the lightswitch to test them out. Lance must have already turned the power on, because they worked right off the bat. The chandelier was more beautiful than ever, and she had to hand it to the guy; he did a good job. It looked as if it belonged there and gave the old burnt place a feeling of grandeur long since lost.

The living area was almost unrecognizeable when she finished an hour later. By then it was lunchtime, and her growling belly demanded to be fed, but she ignored it for the time being. She was proud of her hard work, and she stood there admiring it for awhile.

The floor was still scorched a bit, but the trash was all gone, and it was swept. The walls would have to be repainted with non-lead paint, but that was a job she could do later. The two fireplaces in the main area were now clean, and at least there the soot and scorch marks didn't look so out of place.

"Now for the basement," she said to the empty room. She had been dreading the basement. She remembered smelling somethning sinister near that door, and she wasn't at all sure she wanted to go down there. But she had no choice, and che frowned. What would her brother say?

_Don't be a wuss, AJ. Get down there and let's just do it!_ That motivated her. Whatever she was, she was _not_ a wuss.

She set the Swiffer and cleaning solutions down, along with the dustpan, and just held an empty trashbag. She didn't know what she was going to find down there. She was pretty sure it was where the ghost lived, though.

She cautiously approached the door, noticing how the short hallway seemed to have grown infinitely long, as hallways often do when you are dreading going into an unknown territory. (like the principles office heheheh) Maybe she should call Lance? No, she told herself. He's afraid of this place, most _especially_ the basement.

With trembling fingers, she grasped the cold metal knob, and slowly turned it. The door opened on an absolute darkness that even the lights and the sunshine outside didn't dare penetrate.

Then the smell hit her.

"Oh, aaahhggg... _god, _what is that _smell?" _she cried.

From down below, she thought she heeard a cold snicker.

She stood there at the top of the stairs for a moment, trying to think of what the smell reminded her off, while simultaneously trying not to gag. It was a good thing she had an empty stomach. She might have lost whatever food she had in there. That reminded her.

Once, when she was a kid in Maine, she was living in a trailer with her mother and brother and half sister, and one summer the power had gotten shut off. No surprise there, the place would have been labeled as uninhabitable for human living if the authorities had ever bothered to raid it. But the food in the freezer had gone bad, and the smell had overpowered the place. They had to get rid of all the meat because it had gone spoiled. That was what the smell reminded her of. Spoiled meat.

All of a sudden, she didn't want to go down there. Not without someone else. Let everyone call her a wuss, but it was the last thing she wanted to do. But what choice did she have?

Slowly, she descended, letting the smelly darkness overpower her. She groped along the walls for a railing of some sort and found one, but it felt so splintered she just felt along the cold, damp stone wall instead. The sound of her own footsteps was maddeningly loud in her own ears, and she kept imagining things sneaking up behind her and pushing her down in the darkness.

When her feet found no more steps, she started feeling around for a lightswitch of some sort.

She found what felt like one, and flipped it on.

Immediately, she wished she hadn't.

The basement was filled with rotting corpses.

She stared in terror a moment, trying to scream, but all that came out was a mewling sort of whimper.

There was red and brown everywhere. The remains of rats lay scattered everywhere among the bodies, and she noticed that the freshest ones smelled the most. They were bloated, black and purple with decomposing gases and their sightless faces seemed to beg her for something. Not one of them looked as if they had died peacefully.

She heard the snicker again, and tore her face away from the grisly sight. She saw Jackal floating an inch off the floor, leering at her from the other side of the rotting corpses.

"I'm not afriad of you." she finally managed to say. Jackal gave her a questioning look, as if to say _why not_, but she just shook her head.

"I'll be back, with help this time. Please, don't hurt them. We're just cleaning the place up. We really _don't_ want to hurt you. We'll leave you alone." she stammered. She kept looking from the ghost to the corpses and back to the ghost again, imaging what it must have felt like to have your eyes torn from your living head while you were being disemboweled.

"I'm going now. Please don't hurt me." she mumbled. She was already planning a thousand different escape routs but this was an asylum! No one got out back then, she thought, so how was she going to escape this maniac?

Jackal shrugged and raised both hands, as if sayin _whatever_ and he driffted sideways into a room down the hall. AJ breathed a sigh of relief and looked at the body nearest to the stairs.

She wordlessly tiptoed and sidestepped around the bodies, making her way back to the stairs, and the body she'd spotted.

If the dead child gave any recognition that she was there, it kept its silence in a frozen scream.

"Hello, Boreham Wood General, how may I help you" said a womans voice on the other line.

AJ had gone directly upstairs and called the hospital from her cell phone. She would have called the cops, but she didn't know what the number was here in England. So she called the next best people. Besides, the dead bodies downstairs wouldn't get any better if she called the cops.

"Yes, uhm... I'm the caretaker for the old BorehamWood Asylum, and I just got back up from the basement..." she finished telling the operator her story, and the woman on the other end was quiet for a moment.

"We've just dispatched an ambulance to the address. How many would you say there are?" asked the woman on the other end.

"Oh, geez... more than ten." she said.

"Authorities will be on their way shortly." the woman hung up, and AJ was left standing alone in the brightly lit main room of the asylum. She knew only one thing.

She was in big trouble.


	6. Astral Confrontation

Hey, thanks to Narias, who just gave me a great effing idea for the ending of the last chapter!! I think this is gonna have a happy ending after all... zips mouth shut

Enjoy

"_lookit 'im, his hair's all lousy!!"_

_"Ooooh, stay away from him, I bet he has a disease!!"_

_"Leave me alone!" screams a seven year old Ryan defiantly._

_The other kids laughed and pointed and that made Ryan want to cry, but big boys didn't cry. He was determined to prove to them that he was a big boy._

_Meanwhile, a fully grown Ryan stood on the side and watched this memory through to the end, getting angrier and angrier by the second. They had tormented him to no end. They had made his life a living hell._

_As he stood there, a prisoner trapped in his own memory, a single tear fell down his cheek. Then he balled his hands into fists and lashed out at nothing in particular and as he did, his hands hit the -_

-Stone walls of his basement cell.

He had been lost in the nether world of all ghosts. Now he was wide alert. Someone else was down there with him. Several someones.

Thinking it was the nosy girl again, he drifted out of his room, surprised to see at least a dozen people, all with various looks of disgust and nausea on their pink, living faces.

They were carrying stretchers and lifting all the dead people he'd killed over the years. He smirked and let them; it was just pollution to him. Nothing in particular. Just dead faces.

"Holy Jesus!!!"

"Mother of God, what the hell happened _here?_?

They all started talking to one another then, but Ryan didn't really care. He raised his arms as far as he could towards the ceiling and let himself drift upwards, through it to the room above. There he opened his eyes.

There were several blue uniformed men standing around doing nothing in particular. One was talking to the frightened looking girl and writing stuff down in a notebook of sorts.

"Ha. THAT's what you get for snooping," he hissed to himself. He contented himself to stand there, head cocked to one side, mouth hanging lazily open and eyes vacant, listening to what was being said.

"And you've been the caretaker here for how long, miss?" the uniformed man was asking.

"About four months. I just became a legal citizen last Ocotober." she replied.

"Mmm-hmm. And tell me again how you found these bodies?"

"I told you. I got permission from the owner to clean the place up, renovate it just a little, and when I got to the basement, I found them all exactly as they were."

"Mmmm. Ryan Kuhn... you mentioned him before. I'd heard rumors, that and all the disappearances. He's still here then?" asked the man. Ryan snapped out of his vacancy at once. She told him about him??

"You mean you believe me?" asked the girl.

The man sighed and rubbed his bald head. "A couple years ago, I wouldn't have. But now... I don't see how anything else is possible. The marks on those people look as if they were made by a dull kitchen knife, but they go too shallow to have been that. Then there's the blunt force trauma... it looks almost like fingernails." he said.

Ryan glared at the back of the girl's red and black head. She _told_ him. When everyone left, he was going to teach her a lesson in keeping her mouth shut.

"Are you going to take me downtown?" asked the girl timidly.

"No. You look shocked enough as it is, and it's clear you didn't do anything but find them. Just give the team half an hour, and we'll have the basement cleaned of all human remains."

At this, the girl got an urgent look on her face.

"All of them? What about in the rooms off the hall? Them too?" she asked. The officer raised his eyebrows.

"Are there bodies in there?" he asked. The girl bit her lip.

"There might be, in the last room on the end... but please, don't go in there. I think it's where Ryan stays. He wouldn't be happy." she said. Ryan's glare faltered. Now she was defending him? He looked at her like a cat looking at a bird outside the window. Dangerous curiosity. He was seriously having second thoughts about ripping her limbs off once the authorities left.

"Hell. Hey Felix!" called the bald man to someone else. He was wearing all white.

"Yeah?"

"Stay outta the cells down there, take only the bodies you can see." snapped the bald bobby.

"Yessir." said the man in white. Ryan shook his head of grizzled hair and drifted back a ways, to see the whole scene before him. Something was different. The room looked cleaner. More like it had the day he had first foolishly admitted himself here. The floors were swept clean, the dust was all gone, the furniture had all been taken out. It was almost unrecognizeable.

Stretcher after stretcher swept past Ryan and the girl, and the blue uniformed people left. In about ten minutes, the only ones left were Ryan and the girl.

Ryan kept staring around, unable to believe his eyes. The asylum... what was she doing to it? Was she trying to reopen it for public use?

A loud and weary sigh broke the silence.

"Thank you for not attacking anyone." she said, looking resolutely at the hardwood floor.

Would wonders never cease?! Set aside the fact that no one had ever bothered him with manners before, but he had no idea what was going on! Sure, they'd taken the bodies away, but why was she cleaning? What did she have in mind?!

She looked over at him and managed to smile a little bit. The effect it made was startling, like a girl a couple years younger was staring at him.

"What are you doing to this place?" he said out loud, but all that came out was a faint echo of his own voice. He almost never talked directly to the living. If they heard anything come from him, he was usually talking to himself.

"I got permission from the man who owns it now to fix it up a little, since I'm sort of living here now. Don't worry. I'm probably not going to go anywhere near the basement anytime again... I promise I won't bother you." she said quietly. He ignored her. All he heard were the words "I'm sort of living here now".

"What do you mean "living here"? I live here!" he snarled.

"I told you before, I'm the caretaker. It's my job to look after the place now, make sure no one breaks in or sets it on fire or something. I have nowhere else to go, so I got permission to move in as long as I work here." she explained. Ryan tried to listen, but all he could think about was the fact that his supply of living people to throttle was going to dry up if this _girl_ was "caretaker" of the asylum. Which meant extra work to contain himself.

Then somethng else occured to him.

"You've been here for a while now, and you never minded the mess before. Why do you want to clean it up now?" he asked suspiciously.

She srugged. "Something to keep me busy. I get bored easily. That's all, I swear." she replied.

Ryan thought a moment. He tried as hard as he could to push all else in his mind aside, his feelings of hatred, his loneliness, his nbitterness, everything except rational thought. He felt his body grow more solid, more real and less ghostly, as he expended the concentration and the energy this required. Ignoring the girl's curious looks at his new materialization, he tried to think normally.

If he could restrain himself enough so that he didn't kill her or horribly disfigure her whenever he fancied, maybe her staying here wouldn't be so bad. In fact, the more he thought about it, the better it seemed. Then, unexpectedly, another voice pushed in.

_No! Look at her!!! Does she look like the simpering little whores you usually target? Not at all!! This one looks as if she could fight if she wanted to! She could seriously hurt you!_

"Leave me alone!!!!!!!" Ryan suddenly screamed out loud, and he focused harder than he ever had before, and felt his body touch the floor. He felt the wind against the bare skin that showed through his ripped trousers. He felt the faint pain in his limbs and face that being dead numbed with time. He was losing energy. If he carried on like he was, he could regress back to the days of his youth again, and he didn't feel like reliving it all over again.

"Whoa..." the girl muttered, staring at him with large green eyes.

Maybe she could be an asset... help him kill people when he felt like it. Or maybe she could help him cross over.

_NO!! Since when has a woman ever helped you??? Who would?!_

"No, stop it, leave me alone! Alone, I said!" he yelled again.

"Uh... are you alright?" she asked suddenly, taking a step towards him. Instinctively, he took a step back and heard a dull thhunk as his tatty shoes hit the hardwood floor. He had never been this real before, not since he died. He relished the pain he felt anew, and was almost sorry when he decided to let go of his focus.

But then something unspeakable happened.

She touched him.

He was about to pull away, lashing out at her with his fingernails, when his concentration broke and he vanished from all sight back into 1894.

But this time, he was not alone. He had brought the girl with him.

She was inside his memories!!! Unspeakable!! How could this happen??

She reeled and fell on her backside in the dirt, looking more stunned than if she had grown a second head. She looked up at him from the ground.

"Where am I? What happened?" she asked. In his head, he could hear her perfectly, while around him, his memory went on without him. No one who walked by took any notice of the oddly dressed girl next to the maniac with the cage on his head.

"I don't know, but I want you out of my head!!! OUT!! Get out and leave me alone!!" he screamed at her.

She blanched and took a step back, looking hurt and pouting.

"... Sorry." she mumbled.

"But where am I?" she asked again. Ryan rolled his eyes and leered at her.

"My memory. It's where all ghosts go when they lose their concentration and vanish from the eyes of people like you." he hissed venomously.

"Is that why you're always angry or sad?" she asked.

"Maybe. It's none of your business." he shot back.

"But how do I go back?" she asked, suddenly looking afraid.

Ryan thought for a moment. She had gotten here in the first place because he had been more solid, more real than before, solid enough for her to touch, anyway. And just when he was about to let go of that solidness, she touched him and he dragged her with him into nothingness, although her body was probably still there, bereft of its inhabitant for the moment. An empty husk. He didn't know how he knew this, he just did.

"I need to rest for a while. I stayed solid too long and I spent up too much energy," he said darkly, not really wanting to say anything to her at all.

They said nothng for a few moments, Ryan glaring into the sepia-tones dirt ast his feet, and the girl looking all around her with wonder and curiosity. He supposed she had never known what his time era looked like.

Suddenly, the space around them disappeared, and they were surroiunded by a blank white void. Ryan's purgatory was switching to another memory in time. The white vanished, to be replaced by Ryan kneeling in his empty cell in the basement, a gas lanturn on the wall the only source of light. He was kneeling there, his arms vound in the straitjacket, his hair in his face. The cage wasn't there yet, and the Ryan in his memory was sobbing into the dirt at his feet. Ryan didn't want the girl to see him like this. Pathetic and weak in his living sorrow. She might not be as afraid of him if she could.

"Oh..." The girl said. She stared at the memory Ryan, then back at Ryan's caged form beside her. He was fuming and he wanted to hit her, but he knew he shouldn't. It was one thing to hit a body; to physically abuse the inner soul with his own was quite another, something even he wouldn't dare do. He didn't know quite why, but something just beyond his reach stayed his hands.

"I had no idea it was that bad back then... and I thought I had it bad when I was a kid..." the girl muttered.

She turned to him, then.

"Can you direct the memories to wherever you want?" she asked.

"Yes. But I don't want to. I need to restore energy, remember?" he said sarcastically.

"Oh." she said. The memory changed yet again to the blank white void, and this time, when memory resurfaced, it was his worst one. The glass house incident. He closed his eyes and ignored it, trying to focus on getting his strength back so this girl could go back to her _own _body and leave _his_ alone.

"Uh...Ryan?" she said. He ignored her.

"Ryan?" she said, more urgently this time. He opened one yellow eye, but saw nothing amiss.

"Ryan??"

"What?!" he snapped, eyes open again. Then he saw what was the matter. Somehow, her shimmery living soul was glowing with a soft golden light quite unlike the sepia tone of most of his memory.

"What's happening to me?" she said. Her voice was growing fainter. Without meaning to, without even thinking, Ryan did somethng He hadn't done in years.

He grabbed her wrists and forced her to stay with him. He didn't know what the gold light was, but he didn't think it was going to get him any closer to passsing on if he let this girl's soul die in his memory. Bad polution too, now that he thought on it.

The glow disappeared, and her form, for the moment, became solid again.

"I wanna go back." she whimpered, suddenly not so tough. Her green eyes were watering and Ryan thought she was going to cry.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on going back to the outside world. He grabbed her hand roughly, digging his bony fingers in.

He reappeared standing where he had faded away, directly in front of the girl's for the moment lifeless body. Her eyes were vacant and her muscles were slack. Suddenly, the light in her eyes returned, and she gave a great, shuddering inhale and starting to hyperventilate.

"Hah!!" she cried, drawing quickly back from him. He stood still, arms at his sides, and watched her with the slightest movements of his caged head, eyes half lidded and glaring.

"Don't you EVER touch me... EVER AGAIN!" he snarled at her.

"I'm sorry!" she gasped, clutching a stitch in her chest.

"... You almost passed on without ever even dying." he realized out loud.

"...I know. Thank you for stopping me. Really. I don't want to die." she said, somewhat more calmly now that she had got her breathing back under control.

"I'm going now. Do whatever you want with this place. I don't care." he said, and with that, he turned and walked away from her, still trying to mentally scrub her out of his mind.


	7. The Funeral

This is a sort of gloomy chapter (as if the name of the chapter didn't give it away)

Enjoy

AJ watched him go, still unsure if she had witnessed the whole thing, or if she was going crazy like the Asylum's only patient. Had hse really just gone back in time to the 1800's? In someone else's memory, moreover? It had seemed real. She still felt sort of cold from it; it had been freezing inside his memory.

She folded her arms across her considerable chest and looked around. Lance said he'd have someone in the next day to replace the floors, upstairs and down, and fix the roof. She had only been upstairs once, and it was cold, drafty and leaky.

Her cell phone rang. She answered it.

"Hello?"

"AJ! Where on earth have you been, I've been trying to call you for the last fifteen minutes, but you never answered! Is everythin' alright?"

It was Havoc.

"Uh, yeah. I'm ok. I'm at the asylum, just cleaning up." she replied.

Havoc tsked in disapproval.

"Hey, I was trying to call, 'cause I got some bad news. Lance's in the hospital."

This got her attention at once. Lance in the hospital???

"Oh my god, where? What happened?" she asked. She was clutching the phone so hard her knuckles were turning white.

"I dunno, but it's common knowledge on the streets, couple o' people saw 'im go in the ambulance. You should get down there as soon as possible."

"Oh, ok, ok, I'll be right there. Thanks, Havoc. Bye." she hung up and simply stood there for a few seconds, trying to absorb what she had just heard.

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It took her fifteen minutes to find the little hospital that Lance had been taken to. Then the nurse at the front desk almost didn't give her the room number. When she stepped into the room and saw Lance on the bed, she stopped and stared.

He was asleep, an oxygen mask on his face and an IV in his arm. His usual ruddy face was ashen gray and he looked sick.

"Lance?" she said quietly, even though he probably couldn't hear her.

She walked over to the chair beside the bed and sat down. She took his hand and was surprised when she felt him grasp it. He opened his eyes and looked at her with weary eyes.

" 'J. You're here." he said.

"What happened?" she asked. He didn't answer for a moment, but then he raised a shaky hand and removed the oxygen mask.

"I don't know. One minute I was trying to drag something off she shelf in the closet and the next I'm here. They say it was a heart attack." he said. He grasped her hand even more firmly, and AJ was surprised to find tears in his eyes.

"I've lived a long, eventful life, AJ. I've seen a lot of things, and I've tried to help the world. I think I did. Maybe my time is coming to an end." he said. Why was he talking like this? She was kind of embarassed. No one had ever talked like this that _she_ had heard, except on movies. He was talking like he was on his deathbed, but his vital signs were good.

"Lance, what are you talking about? You're not going to die yet. You're only 60," she assured him.

"64," he corrected her, smiling.

"Whatever," she replied, and he chuckled.

"I want to tell you something, just in case. They want to keep me here for observation for the next 24 hours. In case something, anything happens to me, my will is in my desk drawer upstairs in my room. You'll find the key to it taped to my bookshelf." he said.

"Lance... you're not going to die." she said. He _couldn't_ die. He was the only other friend here aside from Havoc, what would she do if he did die?

"That's the spirit dear." he muttered, and he raised the mask once more, took a deep breath on it, and closed his eyes.

"Just in case..." he mutterd.

A nurse walked in.

"Visiting time is up, miss. You'll have to leave for now." she said not unkindly. AJ nodded, too lost in thought to speak, and quietly left the room.

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When she got back to Lance's, she went directly upstairs and stopped in front of the hall closet. Sure enough, the door was open and the small metal footstool still stood there. One box was more askew than the others, and she limbed up and took it down.

She brought it into Lance's room, turned the light on and shut the door. Sitting on his bed, she removed the cover of the tatty old shoe box and found what he had been looking for.

Pictures, some black and white, others the same sepia tone as Ryan's memories, still others in perfect color. A couple poloroids. Lance was in quite a few of them. She found newspaper clippings, reminders of all the good things he'd ever done for the community. She felt tears well up unexpectedly. How could such a good man be allowed to die at only 64? Look at all the things he'd done! Community service, help for the homeless, countless donations to help feed the hungry, and taking her in, a complete stranger!

She put the photo she'd been holding down long enough to wipe her eyes, which had become quite watery. She kept sifting through all the old photos until she came across one of a young girl wearing a yellow dress and patent leather shoes. The photo was cracked and very old. She turned it over, and there in Lance's handwriting was the name Bonnie. She turned it over again to look at the photo and managed a small smile.

She set the box aside, took the picture over to his bedside table and gently propped it up against the other picture there, of both of them at the beach. She thought that it deserved the place of honor in troubled times like this more than hers did.

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Later, after she had eaten a meager solitary dinner, she returned upstairs and stood facing his bookshelf. Numerous works there included a few famous American authors, and a lot of old classics. The Indian In the Cupboard, Jurrasic Park, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Stephen King, Jules Vern, among several others she had never heard of before. She felt along all the shelves with her fingers until she found a sticky bump on the underside of one. She bent down and rescued the tiny key from the old tape there, and sat down at Lance's desk.

She sighed and sat there staring at nothing for a moment, just thinking. Then, before she knew what she was doing, curiosity got the better of her and she bent down and unlocked the bottom drawer.

Inside were crisp documents, a lockbox with a key taped to it, sheafs of paper, bank statememnts, bills of reciept, shipping records from stuff he'd ordered from overseas. Finally at the bottom, she found what Lance had mentioned. It was a homemade will, written on regular computer paper. It read :

My Last Will and Testament

This is a homemade will of law, and my last and final wishes, should I die before my time, are as follows:

First off, I wish for my entire demonstrative legacy to go to my very good friend, Alessandra "Jay" Dunbar. She has not been in my life very long, but she is like the daughter I never had.

Secondly, I would like to bequest half my affairs to various donations to which I have been donating for years. The other half is to go to my same friend as stated above, Alessandra "Jay" Dunbar. As to the house, all its furnishings, and contents, I donate it to the town and let them do with it as they wish. My car, my beloved Bonnie, will go to my last remaining relative. If none can be found, then the government must note that I wish it to be given to the daughter I never had Alessandra "Jay" Dunbar. The deed to the old BorehamWood Asylum shall be handed over to Alessandra "Jay" Dunbar, as well as all it entails, furnishings, excetera, along with the trust fund my father before me set up to renovate the estate. All funerary expenses are to be charged to my personal accounts, and I ask that I be buried in the same cemetary the rest of my family is, right beside my father, in plot b-12.

I hope the time never comes to when I die before I must, but the Lord shall take me when He sees fit, and in the case of this, I, Lance Elisha Stone, hereby certify that this will shall on no account be violated. For validation of this willl and testament, I request that the courts speak to my law councelor, Edward Smith.

There then followed Lance's enormous loops signature of Lance, which brought a small smile to her face, and the signatures of two other people, one Beverly James Sharpe, labeled "uninterested witness" and another Henry William Walker, "uninterested witness".

She set the will back where she had found it, locked the drawer back up again, and went downstairs to sit on the couch. In his will, he had called her "the daughter I never had". Did this mean he had no children? She was also faintly embarassed that he had called her "daughter". She didn't know Lance thought so highly of her. As to the the things he was leaving to her, she didn't fullly understand the terminology he'd used, so she didn't really know what the things were, except that he had left the entire Asylum to her.

Her cell phone rang. She checked the number. It was the hospital.

"Hello?" she said hurriedly. She hoped nothing was wrong with Lance.

"Is this Miss Dunbar?"

"Yes. Is everything okay with Lance?" she asked worriedly.

"Yes, yes everything is fine. We just called because this is the only number he left for us to contact. We just had a few questions." said the nurse on the other end.

"Ok." she said, unsure of this.

"Do you know if Mr. Stone is allergic to anything?"

"Uh... Peanuts, I think, but that's all he ever told me." she replied.

"Mmm-hmm, and does he have a will all made out in case of his death?"

Where was she going with this? Tears again sprang to her eyes and she fought to control them.

"Yes, but why? Lance hasn't died, has he?" she asked. The nurse ignored her, and continued with her questioning, asking things like "does Mr. Stone have any remaining relatives, does Mr.Stone have any job contacts, does he have all the proper insurance", until finally, AJ found a space in which to wedge her question again.

"Is he okay?" she demanded more firmly.

"Would you hold, please?" she asked.

"No, I want to know if he's alright!" she said a little more loudly, but the line was silent. She'd put her on hold anyway. AJ groaned in frustration and shoved her fist in her mouth to keep from crying in anger. She stayed on hold for what seemed like hours, when the nurse on the other line picked up and said "Miss Dunbar, are you still there?"

"Yes, I'm here, is he okay?" she demanded yet again.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to transfer you to Doctor Menolly, please hold one moment." she put her on hold again.

She discovered that she had never really minded before, but now she absolutely hated the hold button and everything about it.

She waited for five minutes, then a man's voice said "Hello, is this Miss Dunbar?"

"Yes, yes, I'm she, is everything okay with Lance Stone?" she asked hurriedly.

"I'm afraid I have to say no, Miss Dunbar. Mr Stone died about a half hour ago, at a quarter to 5 pm. Are you family?" he asked.

"Oh, man..." she said. This time, she _did_ cry.

"Miss Dunbar? Are you still there?" asked Dr. Menolly.

She meant to say "yes," but the words got choked coming up her throat and what she said instead was "'Es."

"Sorry?"

"Yes. I'm here. Did he have another heart attack?" she asked. Why did she have to cry now, _why_?

"No, uh, something else. It turned out, he died in his sleep. He went very peacefully. Peace Gardens Funeral Parlor will be coming to collect the body shortly. Would you like an address?" asked the doctor.

"Yes."

He gave her directions and gave his apologies again, then hung up. AJ numbly pressed the end call button on her phone and sat staring into empty space. She would have to write the obituary.

She looked around the room, at everything, the tv, all the book cases, the kitchen. It was just starting to hit her that the man who owned everything was gone. She was sitting in a dead man's house.

She felt she couldn't sit there anymore. She ran upstairs, grabbed the picture of Lance's childhood girlfriend off the bedside table and ran back downstairs and grabbed her trench coat. Then she grabbed her car keys and headed out.

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She drove slowly through the light rain, peering out both windows just in case she accidentally passed by the place. People behind her honked, but she ignored them. She spotted the place on her left and got into the next lane, turned and parked her car. She shut it off and just sat there for a moment with her head resting on the seat behind her. How could this have happened? Lance had been fine lastnight, and now, she was sitting in a funeral home waiting to see the body. She had Lance to thank for so much since the plane had stranded her a year ago, and now she didn't think she would ever be able to.

She got out of the car and vaguely thought that she was wearing the entirely wrong thing to go into a funeral home. She had a pair of green pants with chains on and a skull t-shirt.

She stepped nside and was immediately overpowered by the gagging smell of flowers. Roses and tulips and daiseys and babies breath on every available space. The inside was set up like a Victorian home, complete with plush mauve carpet anf wood paneling on the bottom walls. She was greeted at the door by a man in a charcoal gray suit.

"I'm very sorry for your loss." he said, shaking her hand.

A second man walked towards her wearing a black three piece suit. He was young and had slicked back black hair.

"Hi, I'm the funeral director, my name's Adam. How can I be of seervice?" he asked, shaking her hand. This was all happening way too fast.

"Uhm, yeah... my friend, Lance Stone, just got here, I think, from the hospital..." she stammered.

"Lance Stone, Lance Stone... Ah, yes, he's still being prepared." he said, looking through a small book.

"Prepared?" she asked, thinking of knives and needles.

"Well, a free wash and shampoo is part of the services we render, then we usually contact the insurance agencies of the deceased and they pick out a coffin, as is the case with Mr Stone, who had no remaining relatives. Shall I show you which room to go to?" the man asked.

"Yes, please." she said, relieved not to have to look for it alone. The man led her through to a big room lined with pews and flowers. A lone coffin sat at the head of the room on a low, red-clothed bench, the wood made of polished cherry mahogany. She walked slowly up to it and saw that it was lined with gray satin. Lance wasn't there yet.

As if the people in charge had read her thoughts, two men walked out of a door set behind the casket, one carrying Lance by the arms, the other, holding him by the legs. They carefully set him in the casket, arranged his limbs and closed the bottom half. They gave her apologetic looks and exited.

She approached the casket, and looked down at the man who had helped her so much. Lance's fluffy pale blonde hair was freshly washe dand dried, and there was a hint of rouge to his face, but otherwise, he could have been sleeping. Her throat got a painfull lump in it and her heart ached. She had never known it before, but she'd loved him. She had never met anyone so full of vitality or life, nor had she known anyone as kind as he was. She couldn't stay here anymore. She was about to cry again.

"Goodbye, Lance. I'm sorry I never thanked you." she whispered.

She made her way out of the funeral home, not sorry ot be away from the gagging, cloying smell of the funerary flowers.

Once inside her car again, she called Havoc. He answered after the third ring.

"Hey. Izzy ok?" he asked.

AJ choked a sob back and gave a great, shuddering sigh, trying to get herself under some sort of control.

"Is he ok?" havoc echoes her earlier please to the hospital staff.

"Havoc, they say he... died in his sleep around quarter to five. I'm at the funeral home now."

"Oh my god. Hey, y'want me to come there and meet you?" he asked, genuinly concerned.

"No... no, I'm going back to the Asylum, wander around the grounds. It helps me think."she said.

"No, you're not. You're comin' to my place, I don't think Lance would want you to hang 'round that place with him gone." said Havoc sternly. AJ almost laughed.

"Don't be silly, I'll be fine... I just... need time to be alone and think for a bit. Call me sometime, and I'll let you know when the funeral is. Gather as many people as you can who you think'll want to come." she said. Without waiting for a reply, and before he could say anything, she hung up and started her car.

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She sat on the broken down swings in the back yard of the asylum. The place was over 100 acres, and it led directly to the woods beyond, but it was blocked off by a tall, peeling wooden fence. This was where, in the past, they would take the patients out to exercise them and let them stretch their muscles. Their wasn't much left, and their were weeds everywhere, but the swings were still relatively intact.

She sat there, one arm curled around the chain, and stared at the ground and thought. About death. About Lance. About Jackal. About everything that'd happened over the last week. Vaguely, she wondered if Lance had been dreaming the moment he died, and if so, about what. She was startled out of her reverie by a rough, skeletal hand on her shoulder. She yelped in surprise, jumped, and spun around.

There was no one there. She glared at thin air and scowled.

"I have no time for this, Ryan." she said his name aloud.

He appeared there laughing and wagging his dark stained tongue back and forth, cackling evilly.

"What's the matter? No sense of humor?" he accused. AJ sniffed, and hastily wiped her face dry of any or all tears, and looked up at him as calmly as she could.

"The man who owns this place, Lance, just died." she said softly.

"Then who owns it now?" he asked.

She paused then, remembering Lance's will. Another shock wave hit her, and she began crying again, more for her loss than anything.

"I guess I do." she said finally.

Ryan growled and disappeared from her sight. She didn't see him again until the funeral.

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The funeral was held a week after she went to the wake. At least a dozen homeless people were there, wearing their raggedy best, a couple well dressed menand women whom AJ assumed were leaders of the various charities Lance had donated to in life, and Havoc. He was looking especially grim faced when he got out of his mother's car, and he joined her near the casket.

"You look nice.," he complimented her. She grunted in response.

She was wearing a long, black skirt with red ribbon trimming and it was kept off the ground by the thin layer of crannoline underneath. She had a black peasant blouse on under her trench coat. For the first time that week, it wasn't raining.

The priest was talking, reading passages from his bible, but she wasn't listening. Not many of his words made sense to her, for she was an athiest, but she did remember all the good times she and Lance had had, from the day he had offered to let her stay with him, to just the other day, when he had been alive and seemingly well.

She was surprised by a hard but gentle hand on her shoulder, but looking around, she saw no one there. Then slowly, Ryan appeared there, looking just as grim faced, but strangly wary, as if he was trying not to attract too much attention.

"I thought I'd come and keep you company." he said. She didn't know what to say, but she appreciated it, and said nothing, only nodded.

"Who re you nodding at?" asked Havoc.

"No one." she said out of the corner of her mouth. The hand on her shoulder squeezed lightly, and he held back a gasp as his claws dug in to her collarbone.

"What is _with_ you?" asked Havoc. AJ shook her head and shushed him.

"Nothing." she assured him.

The funeral went without a hitch. One of the homeless women left a rose on the casket, and AJ left an entire bouquet of white roses she'd picked in the garden of the Asylum. It was the only flowering plant in the place and it had been Lance's favorite.

Just as everyone was going home, AJ felt that hand on her shoulder again, more to let her kow that he was still there than for comfort, and Havoc gave her a brief side hug and waved to her as he got back into this mother's car.

"Ryan?" she whispered.

The hand squeezed briefly, and he appeared. He let his hand drop and leered at her.

"I didn't do it for him or you." he sneered.

"Mmm-hmm. Sure." said AJ. she was trying to tease him, see if he would do anything. Anyone else would have said that was a stupid idea, but she did it nonetheless.

Ryan growled.

"Be smart. See where it gets you, girl." he snarled.

"My name is not _girl_. It's AJ. And thank you." she said.

"I did it for _me_." he said.

"You? How do you think I could help you?" she said incredulously. What was he talking about? He was standing there in broad daylight, dressed in torn pants, a tatty straitjacket, and a cage, and he was talking about her helping him? And since when had he hever left the asylum?

"You could help me pass on. I don't want to be here anymore." he grumbled.

AJ put her hands to her head and sighed. It was getting dark out, and she was tired from the entire week. The cleaning, Lance's death, her little memory trip down Ryan Kuhn Lane... she needed sleep.

She massaged the bridge of her nose with two fingers and looked at Ryan with bleary eyes.

"Fine... Can you just go back to the Asylum, and I'll meet you there tomorrow? I can't talk right now... I'm exhausted." she said.

Ryan leaned in close, his eyes blazing yellow, the scars around his lips more noticeable than ever, and said,

"Fine."

With that, he stuck his tongue out at her, and vanished.


	8. What did you do to me?

This chapter holds a bit of a surprise... see if you can find it!! Ok, so it's sort of obvious, but hey. I've always wanted to say that. This one's a bit shorter.

As always, Enjoy

Ryan didn't know why he felt it; he just did. He truly felt that this girl could help him, which was odd, because he had never thought such a thing in his entire life. She was the strangest girl he'd ever met. She dressed odd, she acted odd, she even spoke odd; of course he'd heard American accents before, during the glass house incident, but she spoke somewhat differently; she slurred her r's and sometimes skipped them altogether.

He walked through the walls of the asylum and suddenly felt a buzzing in his head. This in itself wasn't so unusual; it was only one of the things that sometimes intruded on his mind. But this was different. It was reminiscent of something he hadn't heard in a long time, but if someone had a hand power drill on hand, he would have recognized it immediately. The buzzing reminded him of a power drill intruding on his thoughts.

He jerked his head irritably and looked around. There was a large, ornate crystal chandelier, something he'd never personally seen with his own eyes before, but something he hated to admit he found irrisistably beautiful.

"Hmm." he mumbled, picking at his crotch. Even in death, the asylum's regulation trousers irritated him.

He was bored, and staving off the distant tingling feeling he was getting that signaled a trip back into his memory.

Suddenly, the girl appeared out of thin air!!!

Ryan jumped and stared. Her outline glowed with some kind of light, then shimmered and she appeared to be solid.

She was screaming.

"Shutup!" Ryan screamed just as loud, and then, because it was getting on his last nerve, he slapped her. Her head snapped back, hair lashing him in the face, and she quieted down. She felt herself all over as if to make sure she still existed, and sank weak kneed to the floor.

"What did you do to me?" she asked quietly. Ryan raised an eyebrow.

"What did you do to yourself?" he retaliated.

"What do you mean?" she asked. "I didn't do a damned thing!"

"Try walking through that wall over there." he demanded. If he was right, then she was either dead, or a spirit trapped outside her body.The former was the most likely, he thought with a smirk.

Looking uncertain, she walked up to it, and stretched her fingertips towards it.

Ryan groaned, snuck up behind her, said "Too slow!" and gave her a violent shove headfirst-

-straight into the wall.

Not that surprised, he followed suit and saw her standing in the next room looking down at herself once more.

"Am I dead?" she asked.

"You tell me. What were you doing before?" he asked.

"Driving." she replied.

They both looked at one another, she far more alarmed then he was, and got a deer-caught-in-the-headlight- look about her face.

"Welcome to purgatory." Ryan said

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_meanwhile..._

A man a couple blocks away from the cemetary saw the light green beetle car swerve, go completely in circles and then skid fifty feet only to run headlong into the big old Oak tree just near his house.

"Oh geez..." he muttered. He fumbled for his cell phone and hurriedly called an ambulance.

It got there about ten minutes later. When they lifted the driver out, he was amazed to find that it was a woman. She didn't look very lively, though.

"Step back, please, sir." said one of the ambulance attendees.

"Is she alright?" asked the man.

"She has a heart beat and a pulse, but she's not breathing." said the orderly, looking puzzled.

They loaded the girl onto a stretcher, shut the doors, turened the siren on, and drove away, leaving the nice little car to sit there in front of the tree, smoking and broken; the remains of the girl's faithful little car.

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"Purgatory?! What do you mean, _purgatory_?!" she demanded shrilly.

"Not so loud!" Ryan complained, wishing he could place his hands over his ears.

"What does that _mean_? I don't feel dead!" she cried, just as loudly as before. She was getting hysterical.

"It means you died, now shut up!!" he screeched, and he backhanded her, drawing two thin scrapes across her cheek. They bled. But that was odd... spirits like him didn't, _couldn't_ bleed... did that mean that the girl was now, as she had been when he had accidentally brought her into the netherworld with him? A soul lost outside her body?

"Ow..." she whispered, putting a hand to her face.

"Ok, I lied. You're not dead. The dead can't bleed. Go find your body, and go home." he snapped.

"How do I find it, though?" she asked.

Ryan smirked.

"Follow your own trail. Your spirit should know where your body is. Didn't you ever learn about this in school?" he snapped. He hated her asking so many pathetic questions. Little pissant.

The girl lowered her head and closed her eyes, her long, red and black hair forming a curtain through which he couldn't see her face, and her spirit form lit up again, starting from the inner torso, and expanding, until she shrunk into a tiny pinpoint of light and vanished from his sight.


	9. The kindness of strangers

Little note from the author: Not only do I not own any characters from the movie, but I wish people would start reviewing more... maybe some suggestions as to what you think should happen next? hehehe I love feedback... I also like playing with people's heads and getting advice... Read on.

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She couldn't see anything. Everything went all gray when she closed her eyes, and in her mind, she saw a blazing white ribbon, twisting and curling upon itself. It attracted her like a moth to a light. She didn't know why, but that white ribbon called to her.

She floated, as if on clouds, and followed the white light, and when she next opened her eyes she was standing in a hospital room. A limp form lay under a sheet, and she slowly approached it.

It was her. Her eyes were closed, her multicolored hair fanning around her head on the pillow like some bizarre halo. She closed her eyes, and thought _home_-

-And she opened her eyes.

She shivered and looked around. She was laying on the hospital bed, and for a moment, she was confused as to why she felt so much stiffness in her muscles. It felt as if she'd gone to a metal concert the night before, overdone it in the mosh pits, and woke up the next morning in pain.

She remembered everything. Driving back to the Asylum from the funeral, and wishing she could get there faster. The next thing she knew, it had all gone gray and she'd opened her eyes to find herself there, standing in front of the ghost of Ryan Kuhn.

A doctor poked his head in through the front door, saw her awake, and called for help.

"What happened?" she asked, otherwise unphased from whatever it was that had happened to her body.

"You were in a car accident, miss-?"

"-Dunbar. My name is Alessandra Dunbar." she finished for him. She hated her first name.

"Is there anything wrong with mer?" she asked, looking around, and feeling antsy. She wanted to go home.

The doctor looked at the chart at the foot of her bed, read a few pages, and looked back up at her.

"Not so far as we can tell, but we need to run a few more x-rays just to be sure." he said. AJ groaned.

"Look, I feel fine, I just went to my friend's funeral, I'm exhausted, I wanna get home." she said.

"Miss, I'm terribly sorry, but you _need_ to stay here for another 24 hours-," the doctor began, but she cut him off.

"-Fuck 24 hours, there's nothing wrong with me, trust me. I'm going home." with that, she climbed stiffly out of the bed, searched in the closet of the room, found her clothes, and began stripping right there in front of the doctor. She didn't care; they had, after all, dressed her in the first place, and she had nothing to hide. She was more exhausted and confused than she had ever been in her life, and right now, all she cared about was getting back to her warm bed in Lance's house.

Once again fully dressed, she straightened her shirt out, fished her car keys off the end table beside the bed, grabbed her coat from the closet, and walked out, leaving the doctor behind looking stunned.

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She spent nearly ten minutes searchhing the parking lot for her little green VW bug, but then remembered why she was here in the first place. The loss of her car left her stunned, and tears of frustration prickled her eyes. She slammed both fists into the nearest tree and gritted her teeth against the scream that was building up inside her.

"Oh, maaan." she moaned softly. She looked across towards the downtown area, and the cemetary. Why did she have to pick such a horrible time to feel so alone? Lance was gone, her cell phone was gone, she'd lost her car, she had a ghost bugging her to help him move on although she had no idea why he thought she could help him at all, and to top it off, (as if her day wasn't bad enough)she was now carless, jobless, and stranded. _And_ it looked like it was going to rain.

Could her day get any worse?

Resigning herself to her misery for the moment, she began walking downtown, her car keys jangling lifelessly from her limp fingers with every step.

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She was halfway down the first hill that would lead her to the bvusiest section of downtown, and it was pouring rain by now. She was soaked to the skin, and her wet clothes hung on her like a baggy second skin. Her tangled hair slapped her in the face, and she was so miserable she didn't even notice the car that pulled up alongside her until it honked, and she jumped.

"You from out of town?" asked the driver. She looked over at him with weary green eyes and saw that he had black hair down to his shoulders and a light tan. His almond brown eyes were narrowed behind a pair of thin glasses, and he drove a blue convertible.

She shook her head.

"I live on the other side of town, near the movie place. Big log cabin." she replied over the thinder of the rain. In the distance, thunder rumbled, and the sky was momentarilly lit up.

"Get in, I'll give you lift." he said, motioning to the front seat. He looked like he genuinely meant it, so she walked out around the car and opened the other door. (Remember, cars in England have the driver's side on what would, in America, be the passenger's side.)

She shut the door, and looked down at herself. She was soaking the interior of this guy's car. She looked over at him, and was surprised to find him smiling warmly at her. she gave him a look that quite plainly said _I'm tired, I'm confused, I'm lost and hurt, I just wanna go home_. She thought he got the message. He reached into the back seat and pulled something thick, fuzzy and warm up front.

"Wrap up in this, you look freezing. What were you doing walking home in the rain, anyway?" he asked, as he drove forward.

She took her soaked trench coat off, deposited it ont the floor, and gladly wrapped herself up in the thick, scratchy warm blanket he'd provided. She shivered violently at the sudden temperature change, and wasn't surprised to find her teeth chattering.

"My friend died a couple days ago, I was driving home from the funeral, and I got in a car accident. I was just leaving the hospital," she explained shortly. She omitted the astral projection. She didn't want to freak the stranger out.

The man whistled shortly and shook his head.

"Your car was totalled then?" he asked.

"I dunno. I guess so." she replied, staring resolutely at the floor. It was vacuumed clean, and there was a floormat from a local car rental place. This blue convertible must be a rental car, she thought. This man was from out of town, as well. He sounded different too. Like he was spanish or something. His long, blocky fingers turned the wheel with ease, and the car turned onto Whittle road.

"You American?" he asked. She got the feeling he was just trying to make conversation, so she told him.

"Yes. From Maine. You?"

"Rome, Italy. I'm here helping a cousin with his car dealership." he replied.

"My name's Andrew. What's yours?" he asked. She decided, on the spur of the moment, to give him a fake name. She didn't feel like revealing too much information to this stranger.

"Bridgett MacLellan." she said, saying the first name that popped into her head. She's always thought the name MacLellan sounded cool, the way it just rolled off the tongue. Bridgett had been the name of a vampire in a book she liked.

"Nice name." said Andrew. He pulled onto her road, Lance's big log house looming in the front windshield, and she told him to stop.

"This is it. Thank you," she said. She began to get out, but Andrew stopped her with a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder. She looked back at him.

"If you need a car to tide you over, I could talk my cousin into letting you have a rental free of charge." he offered. For the first time that day, AJ smiled.

"Sure. That'd be nice." she said.

Andrew returned her smile with a rather goofy one of his own, his almond colored eyes crinkling at the corners. He brushed his hair behind his eaer, and put the car in park for a moment. Reaching into a coat pocket, he produced a pen and a slip of paper that looked like a store reciept. He scribbled something on it and handed it to her. She looked at it. It said "4:00 pm, Andrew Rossi ".

"Thanks. For the ride, and the offer. Here?" she asked.

"Sure. It's a date, then," he said. AJ frowned slightly and put the wool blanket back in the rear seat. She grabbed her own coat off the floor and got out of the car. Andrew drove off, leaving her in the rain again.

She wasn't so sure about the way he'd called it a date. She didn't even know him, after all. And she wasn't so sure she wanted another relationship right now, not after she had just gotten rid of her last American boyfriend, who'd been an over-possesive jerk.

Still a bit uneasy, she walked into the house, and flipped as many lights on as she could. She welcomed the warm interior, but it didn't feel the same without Lance. She sank into a chair, heedless of the fact that she was getting the floor wet, and put her head on her arms and cried.

When her crying fit was over, she sat up and wiped her face off, and glanced again at the reciept Andrew had given her. She set it on the counter where she couldn't miss it, but only because she needed a car.

She stomped her way to the gust room, what was now her room, and began undressing, shedding the freezing, soaking clothes. She dressed in her cloud pajamas, the ones she only wore when she was truly cold, because they were so hot. She wrung her hair out in the adjoining bathroom and brushed it out.

These tasks done, she wiped her puffy eyes and walked into the living room, where the plastic bag still sat on the table from the night she'd rented them. She saw that Lance's John Wayne tape was out of it's case, and she flipped the VCR on. The TV came on with it, and she made herself sit and watch the rest of that movie. She knew it would make her cry again, she missed Lance so much, but she didn't care. She had no idea what the rest of the movie was about, didn't know what was going on in it, but when it got to the end, she felt a little bit better.

She shut the TV and VCR off and sat there in silence for awhile, her head so full of thoughts it felt hollow and worn out. She dozed off like that before she even realized that she'd lied down on one of the throw pillows.

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She woke up, foggy brained and hazy-eyed, to the bright yellow sunshine pouring through the window. Judging by the minty, paleness of it, she guessed it was around 7 AM.

She got up, fixed her twisted pajama bottoms, re-buttoned her top, and headed for the shower.

It wasn't until, wrapped in a towel and heading for her clothes drawer, she felt the first eerie prickling sensation on the back of her neck.

The phone rang.

She jumped so bad, she lost her towel, and without thinking, she ran to the kitchen and picked up the receiver and said a breathless "Hello?"

"Is this Mr. Lance Stone?" said a man's voice. A painful lump appeared in the back of her throat at his name.

"No, this is his... er... daughter. My name's Alessandra Dunbar. Can I take a message?" she asked. Then she smacker herself in the forehead. A message? Take a message?! What the hell kind of stupid question was that?

"I'm the man he was supposed to have come over there today, to fix the roof and the floorboards? Is he there right now? I have a question for him," said the man on the other end.

"Uhm, no, actually... See, he had a heart attack. The funeral was yesterday," she explained. Whatever really happened was none of this man's business, she decided.

"Oh," he said. Silence, then,

"Well, I'm asssuming he will still have wanted me to come and fix the roof and floorboards? Has he left anyone with payment for this?" asked the man. AJ thought of the bond for the Asylum that Lance had mentioned in his will, and said "Yes. I guess I'm in charge of the place now. When are you coming over?"

"Uh, that was what I wanted to speak to Mr. Stone about. Something came up, and I'll have to come earlier than we planned." said the man.

AJ glanced down at her naked body, and decided it was wierd talking to some maintennance guy in the nude, and she decided to agree to whatever it was so she could get dressed.

"How does 9 AM sound, Miss Dunbar?" asked the man.

"Fine," she said, and hung up.

Fifteen minutes later, she decided there was nothing for it; she would have to borrow Lance's old muscle car. She hoped whoever owned it now didn't mind.

Five minutes later found her at the Asylum, and she was surprised to see Ryan standing there out front with his arms folded across his midsection, glaring mutinously at her.

"You said to meet you here today. Where were you?" he demanded.

"Sleeping. I hope that's not a crime," she said, and with that, she brushed past him and opened the front door.

The front room was almost exactly as she'd left it, with one exception; the lights were off.

"So." she said to the empty room. The hairs on t he back of her neck were standing up again, and she knew Ryan was in the room somewhere. That gave her pause. Had he been there when the phone rang? She remembered getting that same feeling then, too. She decided to think on it later, and began putting all her stuff in a little pile out of the way. The reason pulled up a little while later.

It was a moving van for a furniture store in London.

She had been flipping idly through one of their catologues the day before Lance died and had decided on replacing all the firniture in the asylum with stuff from the store. They were delivering today, something she'd forgotten in all the kerfuffle.

There was a knock on the door, and AJ opened it on two men carrying the ends of a long, wing-tip couch. She moved out of the way so they could bring it in, and they were followed by another man carrying a matching chair. Beyond them, she saw the truck with the name of the company on the side, and the man who had the chair came back and handed her a clipboard.

"Just sign here, ma'am." he said. She did.

"Should be no payments due until next year, but I'm assuming you 'ave the payment for the delivery service?" he said.

"Shit," she muttered, and she made a mad dash across the enormous room to her personal belongings. She did a quick count of her wallet, but in her haste, she couldn't make heads or tails of the notes in it.

She brought it back to the man with the clipboard, and gave him all she had.

He counted it out, and frowned.

"You're short by 'bout 20 pounds. This all you got?" he demanded. AJ shrugged.

"Yeah, uh... see the guy who owned this place and out me in charge just died the other day, and his will hasn't been completely sorted out yet. If you give me an address or something, I can get the rest to you tomorrow," she offered.

The guy with the clipboard looked for a moment as if he were about to say something cutting, but in the end, his look softened and he nodded.

"20 pounds, here at this address. If we don't have it by the end of the week, we'll be givin' you a call," he said sternly. He pushed the clipboard at her again, and pointed to an address in the upper left hand box, then gave her a business card. She stammered her thanks, and the men finished bringing in all the furniture, not just for the front room, but for the seperate offices, bedrooms, and the whole upstairs. The whole front room was crowded with furniture.

The men, and their van left, and she sank into the nearest Chintz armchair. The lights were flicked on all of a sudden, and she could see just how much furniture she'd ordered all the better. Ryan stood near the light switch wearing a look more appropriate to having been clubbed over the head.

"Did you buy enough furniture" he asked sarcastically. Not in the mood for his antics, she threw a pillow at him, which he ducked, and he laughed as he vanished from her sight.

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Five hours later found AJ in a corner of the room near the staircase, trying to help Ryan heave the end of a chair off the floor. They had been at it for hours, and the man who she'd spoken to that morning paid no attention to the fact that she was being helped by an invisible entity. The floors were looking better, and at the moment he was working on the roof, she doubted he even cared.

"Lift your end more!" Ryan demanded.

"I AM lifting it, it's YOU who aren't lifting!" she complained.

Together, they managed to heave the chair up the stairs, and after much swearing on AJ's part, and muttering curses on Ryan's behalf, they got it into the room it belonged in, a smaller room just off the staircase that he said used to be the room of a patient. He knew a lot about the asylum, she learned, which was to be expected.

The entire left wing was home to the male patients, she found out, while the entire right wing was devoted to the femal clientell. The man section of the asylum housed the main room, the cafeteria, the staff kitchen, a living area, a rec room where all genders spent time, and an assortment of closed rooms that Ryan said back in his day were used as isolation rooms for misbehaving patients. He had said this with a sneer and a growl, which let AJ know that he really didn't want her to push the subject.

By the time the maintennance man left, it was almost 8 PM, and with a shock that had nothing to do with the much iproved appearance of the asylum, she remembered Andrew and the time at which she should have been at the car dealership.

"I have to go!!! Man, I should have been there earlier!" she whined to herself. She grabbed the keys to Bonnie and headed outside, leaving Ryan standing. He looked furious.

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She got there at almost 9 PM , having lost herself twice. It was still open, and she parked, and got out before the man outside could even walk over to her. It was dark outside, nearly dusk, and she saw with some guilt that the man waws Andrew. He was tall, and extremely skinny, she noticed.

"I'm so sorry, I was working at the asylum, and there was stuff I needed to sign and arrange, and I lost track of time- am I too late?" she asked.

Andrew looked puzzled for a moment, and she remembered that he was from out of town. Then he smiled his goofy smile again, and said "not at all."

He led her inside the lighted office, to where a similar looking man sat, only his hair was cut short and he was a little chubbier.

He said something in what AJ assumed was Italian, and Andrew answered back.

"Sai guidare un'auto con il cambio automatico?" asked the chubbier man, looking at her, and she raised an eyebrow, confused. Was he speaking Italian?

"What?" she asked.

Andrew chuckled.

"He wants to know if you can drive a standard transmission, or do you drive an automatic." he translated.

"Uh... automatic." she replied.

Andrew and the man, his cousin, she supposed, began talking rapidly in Italian again, and his cousin gave her a paper to sign. She signed where Andrew indicated she should. The chubbier Italian man then handed her a tarnished fob with a key on it, and she took it uncertainly.

"Uh... shouldn't I have my insurance card or something?" she asked Andrew. He smiled.

"Nope. Consider this unofficial. It's because he likes you." he said, winking. Still incertain, AJ walked out into the cooler night air, and Andrew pointed into the back lot to a cherry red convertible with a black cloth top.

"There. And here's a card with a number on it where you can reach either me or him, in case you have any questions or something goes wrong," said Andrew, handing her a card. She was going to have to start making space in her wallet for all the business cards she was getting today, she decided.

"Uh... could you drive the convertible behind me? I uh... borrowed my friend's car to get here," she asked. She felt more comfortable with Andrew driving the rental than him driving Lance's sweetheart. She appreciated what he was doing for her, but she still didn't know him too well.

"Sure."

She handed him to key to the rental, and he walked out to it and started it. She got back into Lance's little hotrod, and pulled out, heading towards Lance's house.

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By the time they got the rental to Lance's, it was pushing 10 o' clock. Andrew asked if he could come in and use the restroom, and AJ, just to be nice, let him.

She showed him where it was upstairs, and waited on the couch for him to finish.

He came back downstairs and noticed how tense she seemed.

"Everything ok?" he asked.

AJ sighed.

" Yeah. I guess. This is just happening a litle too fast for me, is all. First thing I know, I'm happy and fine taking care of the asylum, the next thing I Lance is dead and I'm stuck carless... then I meet you, and you seem nice, but..." she trailed off, embarassed. She hadn't meant to say so much at once.

Andrew, to her surprise, laughed.

"Sorry if I come across that way, Bridgett. I just thought I'd help you out. You looked so lost yesterday, I thought I'd do you a favor." he said.

"I know, and I appreciate it. Really. Thank you." she said. She stood up and got another jacket out of the kitchen closet, and Andrew followed her.

"I guess I'll give you a lift back to the dealership, if that's where you want to go." she said, looking at him under the kitchen lights. His hair looked more choppy and rough textured than the silky mass it appeared as when he'd given her a ride the night before. It hung to his shoulders in a spiky mess.

"A hotel near there, actually, if you don't mind. Don't worry. I won't bite," he assured her, smiling.

She led them both out the door to the cherry red convertible and she drove him back towards the car dealership.

By the time she pulled in to the hotel and said her thanks again, it was almost 11. She would be in bed by this time on an ordinary night.

"Hey, Bridgett." said Andrew, just as he was about to walk away.

"Yeah?" she asked.

"What's your real name?" he asked..

Alessandra Dunbar," and before he could say anything else, she put the car in drive and drove away, its tires as smoooth as silk on the dark road home.


	10. Empath Medium

Wondering what the buzzing in Ryan's head was awhile back? Read on to find out!

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Ryan sat slumped in a corner of the main room and glowered at the floor. He thought absentmindedly that he had never spent so much time out of his basement cell since his death as he was now. He still thought the girl could help him, no matter what she said or thought.

_If she would only stay here long enough for me to talk to her_ he thought bitterly. He couldn't believe he was angry because a woman wouldn't stay around long enough to talk, either. It was as if his old childhood enemy had started handing out sweets.

He settled himself further into the wall and toppled out backwards onto the lawn outside. Cursing to himself, he almost started brushing himself off, then remembered he was dead and it didn't matter.

"I HATE being dead!" he screamed to no one. The words sounded so funny in his own ears, he began laughing at the absurdity of it.

He growled in annoyance, and walked back into the asylum, wondering where the hell the girl was.

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Half an hour later, he was still glaring at everything and nothing, fighting his spirit's urge to disappear again into the ether. The drilling noise was back, and it was boring into his non- existent skull worse than ever. An unfamiliar presence was behind it... was this more torment? More hell in a purgatory that was never going to end?

Ryan screamed and clawed at his own head, his nails scraping and screeching against the rusty iron cage, and suddenly, he was back in the netherworld, watching himself be led down into the basement for the first time as a young man of only 19.

But he was not alone.

The girl stood beside him.

"You again?! How did you do that?" he demanded. If everybody started doing this, he thought he just might kill himself over and over, no matter how long it took.

"I didn't know I could do this... I guess I can." she said, her voice more echoey than before.

"Wonderful. Splendid. fabulous.. Now can you GET OUT?!" he screamed at her. She flinched, and watched what was going on around them. The doctors threw the past Ryan into the cell, where the only light came fom a lamp on the wall and the only warm bed was a pile of hay on the floor.

He didn't want her to see his pathetic past, his feeble attempts to push the doctors away, but he was powerless to make her stop seeing. He couldn't bring himself to kill a living spirit, as she was now. Even to him, it didn't seem right. He feared he might be put to some worse punishment than purgatory, even though he never believed in god when he was alive. His belief was, if god existed, how could he watch his creations wallow in filth and poverty and be so brutally mistreated and do nothing? Faith had always been a foreign word to Ryan.

"Wow... What did you do to make them so mad?" she asked, watching as the doctors forcefully restrained him and shoved his arms into the straitjacket.

Ryan folded his arms and growled.

"I attacked a nurse. She was asking for it. Miserable slut." he spat. He turned his memories back to the previous day. There was the nurse, slim waist and pretty hips swaying provocitavely beneath her neat pinafore skirt. The past Ryan watched her with his eyes, like a predator on the African Savannah. He leapt on the nurse and began ripping her dress off, slashing her throat with his long nails as he did so. The girl beside the spirit Ryan watched it all, watched as the doctors grabbed him by the back of the neck and forced him down, watched as the nurse struggled to get up, but suddenly died on the floor. Ryan smiled with grim satisfaction at seeing it all again, then with broiling hatred at the doctors that had spoiled his fun.

"What was that for?" asked the girl beside him.

"Did you see how she was wiggling her stupid hips and just asking for it?! She was the easiest whore on the entire male wing!" he screamed, pointing one torn finger at the dead woman on the floor.

"Funny, they didn't have male doctors on the male wing and female on the female wing..." the girl mused, staring at the scene with her head cocked gently to one side.

Ryan gave a rusty sort of chuckle.

"They did. After this little incident." he said.

The scene changed again, and this time, the Ryan in the past had shorter hair and less cuts on his face. It was from before the attack on the nurse, shortly after he admitted himself. He guessed he was 19 or 20, and it felt foolish to think he had ever looked that young.

His younger self snuck up behind a young female staff and rubbed provocatively against her lower body, and she slapped him. The younger Ryan went into a rage, slashing and clawing at the girl's face until all that remained was a blood-streaked, gore-flecked skull.

"NO ONE hits me," he snarled, as an explanation.

The girl snickered silently behind him and he whirled around and glared at her.

"What's so funny?" he demanded.

"Nothing... it's just... these days, if a guy wants something to rub against, he get's a prostitute, or a rubber blow up doll," she giggled. Ryan stared at her incredulously. Him? Get a whore, like his mother?? Preposterous!!!

"What's a blow up doll?" he asked curiously.

"Nothing," and the girl said no more on the subject.

The void around them went way back, to when Ryan was a baby. He watched interestedly as his careless young mother left him on the couch while she led a young man into the back bedroom. The girl was watching interestedly, mostly at the antiques (to her) and the fashions. Ryan glared at his baby self and saw with no surprise that he had fallen off and started bawling at the top of his lungs.

"Hush, Ryan, Mummy's working!" called his mother from the bedroom, and a man moaned from behind the closed door. The girl got a look on her face that suggested that she was gonna hit something, but instead, she walked over and picked Ryan's baby self up. He stared.

A mere spirit, affecting things in his memory, affecting things that had happened years ago???

"How are you doing that?" he asked. The girl shrugged and began bouncing the baby up and down, crooning softly to it, and eventually, Ryan's younger self calmed down and stopped crying.

"I have no idea, but it's starting to creep me out. I think I should go," said the girl. She set Ryan's baby self down again and this time, she set him on the floor so he wouldn't fall again.

"Wait," Ryan said briskly. He watched as she stood there and watched the scene around them change.

"What?" she asked.

Ryan looked around hastily. They were in the downtown section of Borehamwood. The girl looked around too.

"Wow... was this BorehamWood back in the 1800's?" she asked no one.

"Here... in here," he snapped. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her into the nearest shop. They both drifted through the door.

It was a clothes shop fulkl of dresses, tailcoats, petticoats, stockings, shoes, belts, purses, corsets and jackets. Ryan didn't recognize the shop, but a woman stood behind the counter. Ryan and the girl stared.

She was covered in blood. It was the young nurse they'd watched him tear to pieces. How could this be??

Ryan's mind was reeling. How could this be possible? This wasn't even part of his memories!! He had never been in this place!

"Oh, wow..." the girl muttered

The bloody monstrosity spoke, her bare jaw bone clacking, several of her teeth missing.

"May I help you today, fine sir, and young miss?"

"Uh..." Ryan paused. Then he got an idea. It made no sense to him at the moment, but it would prove one thing.

"Yes, actually," he said, putting on best, most flattering voice. The girl stared at both of them, then at the scene around them. She put two and two together in her hed, and her eyes got wide.

"Don't EVEN think about it," she said.

"We need a dress that will fit her," Ryan grinned, pointing one gnarled, bony finger at the girl, who was wearing her usual chained pants and black skull shirt.

Right this way, miss," said the bleeding horror, and she beckoned to the girl, who was getting paler, despite the sepia shade of everything around them.

"Go," he hissed in her ear, and he was pleased to see her shiver. He pushed her gently after the nurse. They both walked into a back room and vanishd from his view. Ryan closed his eyes and felt himself vanish from sight after them. For once, he didn't know where he was going, and he reappeared in the back room.

It was completely empty, save for a lone sewing machine and a few bare lights.

The bloody nurse with the torn face was pinning the skirt of a long, simple dress, with pale satin ruffles at the skirt and a lacy bodice that was cut low. The dress had no sleeves, only a simple shawl.

Ryan laughed. The nurse was dressing her like a rich lady of his time. Even though everything was sepia toned and pretty much colorless, he could tell the dress had a dark bodice and pale skirts. The shawl was the same shade as the skirts.

"Why can I touch things in this memory?" the girl asked the horrible dead woman.

"You are what is called an empath medium. It means you can turn yourself loose in the spiritual memories of the dead and help them move on. You can also touch things in those memories, although not everyone can see you." said the dead nurse. Ryan listened with interest.

"So... why now? Why didn't I figure this out sooner?" asked the girl. The dead nurse was now hemming the bottom of the outer skirt, so the girl wouldn't walk on them.

"You learn of your abilities when the right time comes along. Ryan's time has come. He must learn what went wrong, where, and what he can do to fix it. Only then can he move on," replied the nurse. Ryan had no idea how she was even talking, because he had ripped her tongue out.

"And how is he going to learnt aht?" asked the girl, although Ryan thought she knew the answer.

"Why, you're going to teach him, foolish girl," said the nurse, straightening up and staring at her with her empty, bleeding eyesockets.

The nurse swept her arm up and around, and knocked the girl down onto the floor. She vanished the moment she touched down, and Ryan was thrust back into the real world. His vision went black before he could ask the nurse what she meant.


	11. Library run in

A/N: I made up the term "empath medium", and any and all information pertaining to it should be disregarded as false, due to the fact that, as far as we know, the term doesn't exist.

Death to spiders!!!!!

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She returned to her own time, in the real world, wearing a whale-boned corset covered in lavender lace and a full-bodied skirt with satin sashes around the middle of it. She liked the effect it gave her, but she needed to get it off. Save it for Halloween, maybe. She took it off and stashed it in an old trunk that had been in the asylum since before it burned down, and which she'd kept there, and forgot about it.

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Over the next few days, she visited the local public library and stayed there from opening till closing. Besides reading every interesting book she could find for pleasure, she also did a lot of research, looking for information on empath mediums.

Not surprisingly, the term didn't come up in too many computer searches she did. She found out a lot about ordinary mediums, however, which wasn't what she was looking for. She had been able to speak to the spirits of the dead since age 4. Mediums were nothign new. She wanted to know what empath mediums were.

Finally, on her fourth day in the library, she found the term hidden away in an ancient book, covered in dust and hidden in the stacks.

She brought it to a table near the one place she knew she wouldn't be bothered; near the encyclopediae. (A/N: I think that's plural for encyclopedia... not sure, so review and plz correct me!)

She opened the book, and right away, she noticed that it was very, very old. The publish date said "Royal Britain Publishing House, Copyright 1876".

She turned to the third page or so, which was the first chapter. It was titled "what is an empath medium".

She sat there for hours, reading the whole thing. Empath mediums were like mediums who, when they got old enough, were able to project themselves astrally into the minds of the dead to help them move on and pass over where they belonged. They did this by being able to affect the memories of said dead spirites and help them understand why they are in purgatory. She got a surprise when it came to chapter 12.

"Dangers of being an empath medium... crap," she muttered. She read on.

"Being an empath medium means that you have the ability to affect objects and, possibly, peple, in the past memories of the spirit. Thisd means, in short, that you are also able to talk to the people in this past memory. **THIS, YOU MUST NOT DO, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.** Talking to people in the past lives of the dead people you help could jeapordize you, the empath medium. "

"Hmmm... I wonder if the dead nurse counts..." she mutterd. But to her surprise, the book mentioned that next.

"Some people or events in the past memories you may experience may not actually exist, or may not have actually happened. It is up to you, the empath medium, to ask the person you are trying to guide. If in fact the memory or person didn't exist, this is what we call a signal. Usually, a signal appears when you are ready to become and empath medium and embrace your abilities, or whenever your seperated astral self is trying to tell you something. You must pay attention to these signals. It is vitally important, as your astral self knows things about your physical self that your brain does not."

AJ finshed the chapter and read on about other things, like :

While the empath medium's astral self is seperated from your body, to others, your body appears as if in a coma, or as if one dead, while you still have a pulse.

While seperated from your body, your astral self always knows where to find your body.

Don't go looking for people to help. They will be naturally attracted to you, and seek you out.

Sighing, AJ looked up at the clock. It was almost time for the library to close.

She gathered the rest of the books she wanted to take out, along with the ancient one about empath mediums, and brought it all up to the checkout desk.

"Library card, please," said the attendant.

She gave it to her, and she scanned it. She de-sensatized the magnet on the spine of the DVD she'd taken out.

"You behave," said the woman, as if AJ were a miscreant child who had a habit of causing trouble. AJ rolled her eyes only when she had turned her back put her items in her old school bag.

She drove home in the rental car Andrew had loaned her, pondering the information she'd read.

It looked like she really was an empath medium.

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So far, she had avoided the Asylum, and she had done it on purpose, until she could get a better knowledge of her new abilities. She guessed she had been forced into her duties early when she accidentally went with Ryan into his memories of the past, because she read later on in the book she borrowed that typically, empath mediums came into their abilities at a much later age, usually 40-50.

She also did a lot of housework around Lance's, because it quickly got dusty and she had nothing else to do. The food in the pantry would tide her over for the next three months if she was careful, and she had no idea how she would survive without her job. She wanted to do nothing else except be caretaker for the old Asylum.

She got a letter in the mail two days after checking the book on empath mediums from the library.

Puzzled because she never got mail from here in England, she opened it and read it.

"Dear Ms. Dunbar,

We are pleased to inform you that we have recovered the will of Mr Lance Stone, and he has named you beneficiary of several assets.

This, in the main, is very simple. You must attend a mandatory meeting at the Law Offices of Edward Smith,along with all others Mr Stone's will states. If you need directions, you will find them enclosed. If you have any questions, please call...

We are sorry for your loss, but hope that what you will recieve eases your pain. Please be there tomorrow, October 21, 2006."

That was it. It gave an address and the phone number, but that was it.

"Dearborne road... " she muttered. That was the address listed on the letter. She had no idea where it was.

She set the letter down and remembered that Lance's original will was still upstairs in his locked drawer. She supposed the government had a copy.

The phone rang, making her jump.

"Hello," she said.

"Hey, luv."

It was Havoc.

"Oh, hey Havoc," she said, relieved. She had thought it would be someone official.

"Why so down? I called with intent to ask you to a birthday party, but you don't sound up to it," he asked, sounding concerned.

"No, no, I'm ...fine. I just got a letter in the mail. From some law office or other, about Lance's will," she said.

"Oh,"

Then, "Well? D'you want to come? It's next week, Halloween," he said.

"Oh, crap, I forgot, it's almost Halloween... that's my favorite holiday, too... I guess Id better get out my red contact lenses and stuff, huh?" she said, excited about the upcoming holiday.

Halloween always made her feel so alive. As if every mythical horror creature and legendary monster was no less real than herself, and she could meet whatever she wanted to. It was the one day of the year she could believe, however secretly, in the things that other adults didn't believe existed. (A/N: That's exactly how I feel)

"So you'll come?" he asked.

"Yeah, of course. Where are you planning on having it?" she asked.

"Well, uh... Actually, I was hoping to ask you if we could have it in the Asylum... just the front room, mind you," he said quickly.

AJ thought about it seriously for a moment. She thought it might work if she could make a deal with Ryan.

"Sure... if you could come over with me and help with the decorations. I didn't know your birthday was Halloween. Lucky," she accused, teasing.

"Sure, but my parent's are gonna be out of town, and it won't be anything special... just six or seven people... you sure it's ok?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's great! I think Lance would be happy... back when he inherited it, it was what he intended. You need a ride?" she asked, getting excited just thinking about it. She hadn't had much to be happy about lately, especially where her new ability and Ryan was concerned, but this was something she was actually looking forward to.

"Yeah, that'd be great... hey. If you get me a present, I can get you a week's worth of free rentals," he joked. She laughed.

"Only if they're comedy," she said back.

"Great... you know where I live, right?" he asked.

"Yeah. What time and day you want to do this, then?" she asked.

"Um... I dunno... today's tuesday? How about next wednesday, around 12:00?" he asked.

"Sure... I'll be there. And you better mean it about the free rentals, buddy." she teased. He chuckled.

"About anything free, I never lie. A man who lies about free stuff makes enemies. See you wednesday," he said.

"Bye," and she hung up.

She stood there, her hand still on the phone, and looked around.

It looked like she had a party to plan as well.

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Later that day, she drove down to the asylum in the rental car and parked right up in front of the double doors.

Upon entering, she was nearly knocked over by a hyperactive Ryan.

"I knew you could help me move on... I'm ready, I want to go! Please, help me..." he said, cocking his head to the side.

She put her hands up to ward him back a couple feet, and shut the door behind her.

"I found out what an empath medium is, and it means I'm supposed to help people like... like you move on and pass over. I got this book from the library, and it told me everything. But I have a question," she said, getting right to the point.

"Anything," he said.

She paused a moment, looking around, already mentally deciding where she would hang the orange and black streamers for Havoc's party.

"I have a friend who's having a birthday party next Friday. We planned to throw it here, and invite some of his friends over. I wanted to make a deal with you," she said, looking him straight in the eye.

"A party? With a boy? Are you sure he's just a friend?" he accused. AJ sensed an agry outburst coming on, and said ""Yeah, he works at the local movie rental place, and it's his birthday Halloween. He's just a friend,"

Ryan seemed to think about it a minute.

"I assume you want me to butt out and mind my own business?" he said in a suave voice.

"Actually, yes. In return, I'll help you move on," she said.

"Deal!!" he said eagerly, almost immediately.

"That means no pushing, hurting, killing and or otherwise maiming any of the guests, no matter how slutty they may or may not look. Got it?" she said dangerously.

"Yes, yes, anything. I'll be in the basement like always. Happy?" he snapped.

"Conent." she said, smiling.

She went back out to the car and drove back to Lance's, her work for the day completed, and got into bed and slept.

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The next morning, she got dressed and prepared to go back to the library to return the books she'd borrowed. She'd read all she needed to, and she didn't really care about the rest. She'd only gotten them to convince the librarian she was only interested in the theory of empath mediums.

She pulled on a floor length black velvet dress, complete with quilted black satin, of the type used to line coffins with, and black ribbon lacing up the bodice. It wasn't really suited to the environment, but it was all she had left clean. She needed to do laundry.

When she walked into the library to return her books, she saw Andrew kicked back in a chair, his face in a book on martial arts.

She pretended he wasn't there, placed the books on the front desk and immediately immersed herself in the juvenille fiction section.

She found a book on dragons that looked interesting (name of author excluded due to that list on the login site of authors who'd rather not have fans write fics on their books ) and another book by Bruce Coville that she had liked as a child. She took them both down and snuck a glance over at Andrew. He was looking at her out of the corner of his eyes.

Faking all pretense, she sighed and walked over to his table. He lowered the book and smiled at her.

Leaning one hand on the tabletop, she said "Waiting for me?"

"No, I was reading a book on martial arts. The fact that I met you here is total coincidence." he said in a cocky tone of voice.

AJ stared at him, one eyebrow raised, and smirked what her friends back in the states called her "trademark" crooked smile.

Andrew stared back for a moment, then rolled his eyes playfully.

"Alright, alright, I was waiting for you. I thought you liked books, so I thought I'd run into you sooner or later. You caught me," he admitted. He looked her outfit up and down and raised a questioning eyebrow.

"It was all I had clean." she explained.

They stood in silence for a moment before AJ broke it.

"My friend is having a birthday party next Friday. Do you want to come? It'll be at the old BorehamWood Asylum," she invited him on a whim.

Andrew looked surprised and smiled.

"Yeah, actually, I would! Should I come dressed up?" he asked.

"Hell, yes! I will be, anyway..." she trailed off, suddenly remembering the old fashioned dress she'd come back in from Ryan's false memory.

"Cool. I'll have to buy a costume, then. See if you can spot me," he grinned, getting up and closing his book.

"I guess I will. Bet I see you before you see me," she said. Why the hell was she flirting with this guy? That wasn't like her! For some reason, it just felt right.

"Bet you won't. I'll see you Friday," he said. She watched him check out his book and walk out the door.

She got up, checked her books out as well, and drove towards Havoc's place. He would know where Dearborne Ave was.

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"Hey, I didn't think the party was until next Friday, I guess you decided to gimme my present early," joked Havoc when he answered the door. Of course, he was talking about her dress.

She rolled her eyes.

"You wish. I was just wondering if you could direct me to Dearborne Ave. They found Lance's will and they're gonna read it in, like an hour. I'd like to get there early." she said.

Haavoc looked at her with wide eyes and laughed at her.

"You'd _want_ to get there early, it's about half an hour away!" he exclaimed, giggling.

"So you know where it is?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, shrugging. "My mom used to take me there for visits with my dad when he still had visiting rights." Havoc's parents had gotten a divorce several years earlier.

"Great! Can you show me the way, then?" she asked.

Havoc looked behind him, and AJ followed his gaze. His mother was behind him, doing dishes. Havoc was AJ's age, about 18, but he still lived with his mother.

"If you're gonna go somewhere, take the laundry with you, it needs to be washed, Havoc," she said, not paying attention.

"Uh, mom, it's my friend AJ she needs me to show her the way to Dearborne Ave. I can do it on the way back, if you like," he offered.

"Fine. The baskets are in the living room," she said, still not paying attention.

Trying not to giggle at him, she waited until he had loaded all four laundry baskets into the back seat of the rental car and they both got into the front.

Next stop, the laundromat!" she joked.

Havoc laughed and punched her on the arm, and they were off.


	12. Halloween

This one won't be quite as long, but it'll still be good, cause I am obsessed with Halloween

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AJ and Havok arrived at the law office just n time.

Rushing into the office (while Havoc drove to the laundromat) she sat down as quietly as she could and looked around her.

They were all seated at a rectangular table, all five of them. Four of them looked like businessmen, but the fifth was dressed casually in a button up shjirt and a pair of kakis. He was an older gentleman. There were potted plants at all four corners of the room and the lawyer himself stood at the head of the room.

"You are?" he asked her.

"Alessandra Dunbar, sir," she said meekly. She's never been in any lawyer's office before and it kind of intimidated her.

"Ok," the lawyer cleared his throat and flourished a piece of paper.

""I wish for my entire demonstrative legacy to go to my very good friend, Alessandra "Jay" Dunbar. She has not been in my life very long, but she is like the daughter I never had." "He read off the paper.

" " Secondly, I would like to bequest half my affairs to various donations to which I have been donating for years. The other half is to go to my same friend as stated above, Alessandra "Jay" Dunbar. As to the house, all its furnishings, and contents, I donate it to the town and let them do with it as they wish. My car, my beloved Bonnie, will go to my last remaining relative. If none can be found, then the government must note that I wish it to be given to the daughter I never had Alessandra "Jay" Dunbar. The deed to the old BorehamWood Asylum shall be handed over to Alessandra "Jay" Dunbar, as well as all it entails, furnishings, excetera, along with the trust fund my father before me set up to renovate the estate. " He read the rest of it.

The rest of the people perked up visibly.

"My assistant will pass out the checks and the deeds and what have you, but I have a meeting to go to. Thank you all for coming, and good evening," said the lawyer.

Another man came up and started handing out checks and slips of paper, and he handed AJ two checks and the deed to the entirety of BorehamWood Asylum. She stared. One check was made out for $200,000, and was titled "borehamwood". The other was for $100,000. She was holding more money than she'd ever even seen, and it was all hers. She looked at the deed. The Asylum was hers. Her very own, to do with what she wanted.

"'Scuse me, miss," said someone, and she looked up at the older man in the kakis. He was holding some sort of registration papers.

"My father left me his car, but I've no need for it. I'm just glad he's gone to a better place. Would you like it?" he asked. AJ tried reading his expression but couldn't.

"Um... sure, I... guess. I just crashed mine," she said uncertainly. The man handed her the papers, and she looked them over. Apparently, the old car Lance had named Bonnie was worth more than 50,000 dollars. The man was loony to give it up.

She followed the rest of them down the stairs and stood in the sunlight, looking for the rental car. It was parked where she had left it.

"Havoc, your dirty laundry better not have stunk up this car!" she teased. Havoc rolled his eyes and unlocked the doors.

While they were driving, he asked, "So? Whad'ja get?"

"You're insensitive, y'know that?" she joked.

"Well?"

"I got the deed to the asylum and a check for $200,000 for it. I got the registration for his old car and I got half his life savings. Happy?" she asked.

"$200,000... blimey. How much was the life savings?" he asked.

"None of your business. $100,000," she replied.

"Damn," he said.

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The next week, Halloween night. It was classic. Around 8 pm, at the start of the party, the full moon was out, the crickets were chirping, and the skies were clear. Strobe lights and a fog machine made the asylum look more spooky than ever, and AJ was very happy with the results. Creepy music played over the louspeakers, most of the noises made by Ryan's spirit, cackling and screaming nonsense.

More than the invited people were making their way up to the doors, and AJ had to turn the majority of them back by telling them there would be no alcohol. The last thing she needed was a bunch of drunk British men stinking up the new furniture.

"Havoc!!" called AJ, seeing him at a distnace. He was wearing a Harry Potter costume, because of his long, spiky black hair and gray-green eyes, although he was quite a bit thinner than the boy from the books. He'd drawn a scar on his forehead with what looked like lipstick and he wore one of his mother's black bath robes, complete with slippers. She laughed at the sight of him in his plastic, lensless glasses and assumed he was making fun of the character.

"'Ey, AJ, looking girly!!! Nice costume!" he complimented her. AJ rolled her eyes and looked down at herself, in her lavender corset, and silk and taffetta skirts, and at the way the dress made her breasts appear bigger and more heaving. She'd done her hair and it was piled on her head in silken waves and a few tendrils hung down on either side of her face, one black, the other red. She felt like an old world lady.

"Thanks. Nice costume yourself. How long did it take you to convince your mom to lend you her robe?" she giggled.

"Not long. She's here too," he shrugged.

"Really? Where?" asked AJ, completely taken aback. Havoc's mom hated social gatherings like Halloween parties. She supposed it was because it was a birthday/Halloween party. She looked over at his mother, who was scooping punch into a styrofoam cup. She was dressed as some sort of fairy, with fake wings and a store bought fairy dress. The costume didn't look half bad.

"Well, what d'ya think? Cool party? What you had in mind?" asked AJ.

Havoc looked around.

"There's more people here than I invited, but at least they brought presents. What happened to your ghost?" he joked. She rolled her eyes.

"Away at the moment. Don't ask," she warned. Havoc didn't.

Speaking of "her ghost"... she saw him at the end of the punch table. Quickly, she excused herself from Havoc and hurried over to the caged ghost.

Pretending she was interested in the candy apples, she hissed out of the corner of her mouth, "You aren't supposed to be here."

"I agree. That's why you're helping me, remember?" he snarled.

"Not what I meant. I thought we had a deal?" she muttered.

"We did. We do. I'm just wondering what this music is," he said innocently. The expression on his face made him look 10 years younger, but no more innocent than your average serial killer.

"Go," she hissed. Ryan disappeared.

"Why are you talking to the apples?" asked Havoc's mom.

"Uh... just trying to decide which one I want," she said, slightly embarassed, and she picked up a caramel one, no sprinkles. She hated sprinkles.

The majority of the party went alright. The crepe paper didn't last long, especially with some of the younger people (teenagers) and she had to refill the punch bowl twice, but all in all, it wasn't a bad party. They played games. She and Havoc's mom formed a scavenger hunt, with bags of candy instad of random things, and they hid them on the first floor and outside.l They had fun with that, and by the end, there was only one bag still missing.

Around 1 in the morning, she and Havoc started seeing people home. First the uninvited guests, then Havoc's friends and family. His mom beckoned to him, and he hopped into her car holding all his gifts, which he said he wanted to unwrap at home.

Finally, it was only AJ left amid the fallen streamers, the creepy music and the flashing strobe lights. She felt happier than she ever after Lance's death. She had plenty of money, someplace to live, a good friend, a job to do and she had just had what was probably the best Halloween ever.


	13. The truth in the end

Here is the truth, well... just read and find out. It's afer Halloween, and AJ and Ryan are sitting in the front room of the asylum, head to head, lost in the ether.

Please review!!!!!

P.S. I do not believe in heaven (although I respect the veiws of those who do and mean no disrespect) I just thought I'd add some sentimental value to this one.

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The girl stood beside him as they delved further back into his memory than ever before. He hated watching all those wretched scenes one after the other; they had been bad enough at the time. But she seemed to be looking for something in particular.

Finally, she said, "stop."

Ryan stopped the flow and they both watched. A doctor was talking to a skinny woman in a ragged dress.

"The director of the orphanage," Ryan growled bitterly.

"Come with me," she said, and Ryan, loath though he was to take orders from a woman, obeyed as she walked right over to the whispering duo.

"...mother died of some unknown disease, we can't find anyone to take him. You must have a room," the doctor was saying.

"Well, we might have one available openeing. The boy has no relatives, you say?" asked the thin woman. Ryan sneered. He wasn't present for this, so he figured they could both see the girl standing just feet away from them, though they paid no attention. She appeared to be listening

Suddenly, she took off running!

"Hey!" cried Ryan, totall yshocked at her behavior.

"Stay where you are, and don't wander off through any memories! I'll be right back!" che called over her shoulder. Ryan stared at her long after she disappeared into the nearest building, a white chapel with a single, pointed tower.

Ryan stood there, tapping his foot impatiently, longing to scrath an invisible itch on his back and knowing he wouldn't hbe able to. Those damn doctors had disfigured him almost beyond recognition.

He stood there listening to the couple argue for what seemed like hours before she girl came running, breathless, back over to him. She put her hands on her knees and bent over fro a couple seconds, catching her breath, Ryan assumed. Damn the living and their infernal need to breath, he thought.

"I know...why your mother...abandoned you," she panted. Ryan raised an eyebrow and prepared himself for some long speech. The girl straightened up and looked at him.

"She contracted a disease that killed her, the doctors found her in the streets. They just never told you because they thought you were too young to handle it, so they sent you to the orphanage and never did tell you," she said very fast.

Ryan thought a moment. As far back as he could remember, he'd spent his entire life at the orphanage. He didn't even remember what his mother looked like anymore; not after all these years.

"Come with me. I think it's time to remind you of what you've forgotten," said the girl, taking his hand. Ryan fought every single instinct to pull back and lash out at her. The feel of her skin repulsed him. Before he could protest, however, they were both gone in a swirl of gray and silver.

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Ryan opened his eyes and saw himself, once more, in the same trash filled room with his baby self on the couch, only this time, his mother was there. He stared. This was the first time he could ever see his mother properly, and he was half convinced that what he was seeing was all a lie. But this was his memory, was it not? He may have been a child, but... something about this was eerily familiar to him.

She was holding him to her chest and singing softly to him. She had carrot-colored hair and a light dusting of cinnamon freckles across her nose. She was humming a lullaby to a tiny, chubby pink baby with a shock of dark hair and green eyes.

"That was you. Your mother _did_ love you, Ryan. She just got really sick and went out into the streets to die so you wouldn't see," explained AJ.

"How do you know all this?" he demanded.

"I went into that church and asked them where the hosopital was, and they told me. I ran there, and asked where they found your om, and they told me to go to a certain street address, where I found this on the ground. Here. Read it," she said. She pulled a very dirty letter out of her corset (she was wearing the same dress she'd worn to the Halloween party) and handed it to him. He took it, shook it out, and read:

My dear Ryan,

I write all this in my very last moments on this earth in hopes that you won't be too sad. While I had a proper upbringing, I have not led a very good life. I did the very best I could, but I'm afraid it wasn't enough. I wanted the very best for you, and I did all I could, but now I lay dying, of an illness I cannot name. It is too shameful. My skin burns from the inside out and I feel faint and lightheaded. I cannot see very clearly and it is hard to breath. I have open sores all over my body and I have one wish; to go home and see my family. I don't want to feel this pain any longer, and my deepest regret is that I couldn't be there for you. I just wish to go home and rejoin my family. I hope that, one day a very long way away from now, when you are old and wise, to see you there again, too.

Never forget that I love you more than all,

Mother

Ryan kept re-reading the letter over and over again, not believing it. His mother had cared for him all along? He thought she'd been a common slut! But then, he had been very young, too young, really, to remember her properly...

He stood there, letter in one hand, and watched as the memory of his mother stood up and brought the baby him into another room. He followed wordlessly and watched as she set him down into a bassinet and covered him with a blanket.

"Sleep, little Ryan," she said quietly, and Ryan could bear it no more.

He took the girl with him back into the present time, in the ruined Asylum, pounded his fists against the nearest wall and screamed and cried.

"Why the FUCK didn't anybody tell me?!" he cried, sobbing unrestraindely into his torn and tattered straitjacket. He had been degenerated into a lowlife criminal who preyed on helpless women because no one had told him his mother loved him! Why didn't the orphanage, or the doctors!!

In that moment, he regretred everything he'd ever done in his adult life. If only he'd had his mother there by him to teach him right from wrong. He'd lost her just when it really mattered to him, and he never forgave her for it. Now he thought he could. It was never been her fault, he realised. It had been the fault of those around him who'd thought him too young to know the truth.

The gfirl watched, with a sad expression on her face, and she astral projected back into her limp body over on a chair.

"She DID love you. And I think she's waiting," said the girl, smiling sadly, a single tear in the corner of her eye. Ryan nodded, more sane in that moment than he could remember, and all he wanted was to... what was it his mother had said? Go home? Home for him had been hell. But he didn't think that was what his mother meant. He was pretty sure she'd meant... where dead people go when they escape limbo, which was where he was now. He wanted to see his mother again.

He looked around him with new eyes and took it all in, as if one who'd never seen it before. Had he really committed himself to this place and spent so many years of torment here?

Then he looked to the girl, the one wo helped him. She'd not only helped him to see the truth, but also, he realised, to renew his faith and trust into people, and, indeed, the female gender once again.

"I ... want to go home," he said, his voice trembling with unshed tears. The girl in the old fashioned dress nodded once, and touched his arm, even though she was alive and he wasn't. He felt a tingle, starting from his feet, and going all the way to his head. It was the first thing he'd felt in almost a century, and he welcomed it. He loooked skyward, where he assumed he was to go, and thought _here I come, mother. Sorry it took so long, but I had to learn some things first_.

Ryan Kuhn's disfigured and tormented soul glowed bright white and he vanished up towards the roof and disappeared. No one ever saw or heard from him again.

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EPILOGUE:

A year later, and AJ and Havoc are still friends. AJ still tends the Asylum, and sort of misses her first charge. She has worked with many more since Ryan and loves what she does. It gives her a feeling of satisfaction, helping people who can't help themselves. She is dating the nice italian guy who lent her the car, and there isn't anything she would like more in the world than to be happy in the hopes that Ryan Kunn was finally where he belonged.

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THE-END""""

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THE END, YAAAAY!!! Please review!!! Tell me what you thought!!! Was it too abrupt??


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